12

THE HALLWAY HANGERS Weeble, Wobble, but We Don’t Fall Down

When I spoke with Boo-Boo in the summer of 1991, he was grieving for one daughter and contemplating the deaths of his second daughter and his girlfriend. He didn’t say so, but it was clear that Boo-Boo was also facing up to his own fate. Boo-Boo died in 1994, having first buried Natasha, Connie, and Ginger. During the early days of my 2006 fieldwork, nearly every street-corner conversation alluded to Boo-Boo’s deathbed courage and to his extraordinary funeral (which featured heavy metal music, songs written by friends, tributes from his family, and a graveside party, which moved to his sister’s home and was still going strong thirty-six hours later). Several people on the fringes of the Hallway Hangers have also died, some of them violently, but the rest of the Hallway Hangers survive. Here are their edited interviews, offered without a theoretical framework to conceptualize the external forces that constrain the men. I’ve been completely out of professional sociology for well over a decade, but that doesn’t mean I could return to Clarendon Heights without theoretical baggage. Indeed, some of my questions introduce clunky sociological categories into the interviews. This didn’t always make for great conversation, but sometimes it induced the men to articulate their own sociology. Rather than being absolutely raw data, these stories are lightly toasted in the telling but retain, I hope, a freshness for the reader.

FRANKIE

Connected

I was told that Frankie now lives two blocks from Clarendon Heights in a small housing development. The owner-occupied duplex homes are painted in pastel colors that suggest that a slice of suburbia has somehow slipped into the city. In fact, these are HUD homes with federally subsidized mortgages. When I asked a man watering his tiny front lawn where I could find Frankie, he squinted at me and shrugged. Sensing his unease about directing a stranger to Frankie’s house, I explained that Frankie and I went way back and that I’d traveled from England. He kept watering the lawn and I waited. Eventually he nodded at the house next door. Before I’d finished knocking, Frankie opened the door and came out on the stoop. His light, wiry hair had thinned but he still moved with an easy lope that contrasted with the piercing eyes and the commanding presence. I stuck out my hand and said my name, and he laughed and gave me a bear hug. “Jay MacLeod. Unbelievable. The hillbilly college kid comes back to the ’hood!” Frankie was heading to work but he introduced me to his bemused wife and teenage son. “Lemme guess,” Frankie ventured with a grin after we’d quickly caught up about families and jobs, “you’re short of cash and need to do another edition of that book.” “Got it in one,” I said, laughing. After twenty years of English reserve and reticence, I was caught off balance by Frankie’s outspoken perspicacity. So much for my higher motives of intellectual inquiry and commitment to social justice! We arranged an interview for the following Saturday morning. When we sat down at the kitchen table I was surprised to glimpse Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky on a side table. I thought the interview went well, but Frankie phoned me a few days later and apologized for the quality of the conversation, explaining that he had worked all Friday night and had been jaded with fatigue. So we met again, and this time his wife and son joined us at the kitchen table for the last half hour. Both conversations figure in the account that follows.

 

 

 

JM: What’ve you been doing for work since I last saw you?

 

I worked in the parts department of a car dealer. That was my job to find a job. I had put in for the City, and put in for Housing. The day Housing called me, the City sent me a letter to hire me. I was looking for, like, a career job, so in ’93 I went to the Housing Authority, worked there ’til November of last year. Then I went over to Highways.

 

JM: How’d you get the job at Housing?

 

Persistence. Just kept calling. Calling and calling. I would call Housing every Thursday at one o’clock and they would say no. And I’d say, “Well, I’ll call ya next Thursday at one o’clock.” And then they called me on a Thursday at a quarter to one, and they said, “Don’t call, come in.” During the interview the head of management realized I’m an O’Sullivan. He said, “You want me to fucking hire you?” Just like that. And I said, “Yeah, listen, I never got arrested in Housing property in my life. It’s my brothers you’re thinking of.” And so when they hired me I showed them my record. Now they said, “Hey, you said you didn’t have a record.” And I said, “No, no, what I said is I never got arrested in Housing property.” So I told them, “Call my ex-PO, he’ll vouch for me.” It was a good job, maintenance. Started at Lipton Park, then went down to Howard’s Court, the elderly home, the one over the tracks, and I was there for nine years.

 

JM: I imagine maintenance was the easiest part. Was it dealing with people as well?

 

I’m a project kid, and I get along good with everybody. You’re in their house because something’s broke, so you’re the front line. You hafta have some diplomacy, some empathy, sympathy. But a mom with one kid would be bitching and I’d say, “Go get a job.” “You don’t understand, I got a kid.” I said, “Look, you’re talking to the wrong guy; my mom brought up eight and worked full-time.” At Lipton Park I was a servant of Haitians; the projects aren’t what they used to be. A lotta foreigners. And they’re dirty, very tolerant of pests. But the elderly home was good. I’m a pretty diplomatic guy. They loved me there. I was there for a long, long time too. And I actually miss it.

 

JM: So how’d the opportunity at Highways come about?

 

I applied. You know the way them jobs come, Jack, only one way you get those jobs. You have fifteen thousand applications, they don’t just pull your name out. Connections. That’s how it works. It’s a good gig; I like it. Nights suck. But it’ll be a good job. Heavy equipment. Union job. Big money. A little dangerous out in the fucking road with a lot of drunks. We had a guy rear-end us last night. People just don’t fucking pay attention. I do a little bit of everything. Run the sweeper, a loader, operate a cone truck, set out cones, block off roads. Usually a crew of four. You have your truck, a backup truck, lot of times you get a statey [state trooper] with you. Depends what you’re doing. Like whether we’re washing the walls. They do the tunnels by a brush and a front-end loader. Them water tankers follow it. And we do the sewers, clean them out.

 

JM: Will you have a chance to progress there?

 

Oh yeah. I’m actually waiting for a job to open up right now. It’s like a maintenance manager: greasing the fans, greasing the bearings. They have huge exhaust fans. For that one mile of tunnel we have twenty miles of vent shaft. So I’m waiting for that to kick in, and that’s big money there again. I just got my crane license for a rigger’s job.

JM: And does this allow you to use your leadership skills, your personal skills?

 

If I’m on a crew it just seems that guys listen. But as for the foreman, I’m always on punishment just cuz I’ll stick up for others. These two guys, they’re dicks. They’re fresh, one kid grew up in Salisbury [wealthy suburb], and you can tell he had his lunch money taken away from him, and now he’s the boss. The other guy’s a herder out from, like, Putnoe.

 

JM: A herder?

 

You know, herder: a country boy like you. [laughs] Now, these guys have some authority, but I’ll say, “Fuck you, pal.” So I go on punishment. Like last night I was on punishment. They knew my back was bothering me, so they kept me out in the rain last night washing lanes. That’s fine. They can’t break me. I took it in stride. My back was a little stiff. So he stuck me out in the cold and the rain. But no big deal.

 

JM: So having a boss like that grates on you, but you’ve found ways of coping with that, dealing with that.

 

That’s his shit. Those are his issues. I pray for him. Sometimes I pray that he gets hit by a truck. [laughs] I don’t sweat the small stuff. But I’m still a project kid at heart, and my first thought’s still the project thought every single time.

 

JM: Which is?

 

Not a good thought: whack him, stab him. But then my God thought comes in and overrides it. I hooked up with a guy a few years back, a guy from the neighborhood, an ex-armored car robber. He taught me that it was okay to do the right thing. I had to delete that old shit. It’s all right to be a good guy; it’s not being weak. And he got me back into the church. He’s a Eucharistic minister. So I read my gospel every day. That’s part of the recovery fellowship. The Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. God is big. I carried a lot of shit through life that I just didn’t think I would ever be forgiven. But I believe I am forgiven. And that’s made life a little easier. I’m not proud of a lot of the shit, but what happened, happened. What are you gonna do?

 

JM: When did you first experience this sort of turnaround?

 

Part of the twelve steps is to find the power greater than yourself. I kind of halfheartedly believed. I believed in keeping clean and keeping sober. But now I know. I don’t need to see to believe. I don’t hafta feel the hole in his hand. I know he’s there, definitely know he’s watching over me. He’s blessed me with a great wife. Jesus, I’m still alive. If I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken a little better care of myself. [laughs]

I know today that I grew up with a lotta stuff. My old man killed himself when I was five. He jumped off the Emerson Bridge. And I didn’t deal with that until I got sober. We never talked about it. Growing up I thought it musta been something we did. Today I know that he was an alcoholic and a gambler who was heavy into debt. His option was, “If I kill myself my kids will get my veteran’s benefits.” Which we did. I dunno. I don’t know what one person’s thinking when they’re suicidal. [pause] At some point did I think of that? Absolutely. But knowing what happens to the people left behind, it was never an option. So I dealt with that. I dealt with a lot of shit within the family. It was a crazy fucking house. Stabbing, shootings, and that just was the living room. [laughs]

I wrote it down, all my resentments. And then I made my amends. I believe the day I was set free was when I apologized to my brother for stealing off him. He had thought it was my other brother for years. So I paid him, apologized for him thinking it was the other brother. And he turned to me and said, “Well, I forgive you, cuz I’m sure you forgive Dennis.” See, my brother Dennis had like eighteen felony convictions under my name. I said, “Forgive Dennis? Fuck him, that motherfucker.” So I walked back to the house. And then I thought, “Here I am looking for forgiveness from people, and I’m not going to forgive.” Y’know, I trespass against ten people for every one that trespasses against me. And it wasn’t until I said, “I forgive everybody,” that I finally learned how to sleep without homicidal fucking thoughts at night. I’d got into real stupid shit, too, remembering something that happened when I was like eight, and me saying, “That motherfucker, I’ll kill him.” It would be my first thought in the morning and during the day I’d kill him a hundred fucking times in my head. I don’t have that anymore. I don’t have it. It’s nice, it’s nice to sleep. I have some rough sleep some nights, just from some of the fucking madness back in the house and some of the stabbings that I was involved in. So that bothers me. That’s the only thing. I’m pretty good until I get behind the wheel. I still got a little fucking road rage [laughs], but I’m working on that too.

I’m trying to deal with this kid. Trying to get him back on track. He’s been sheltered, maybe a little too much, y’know? Spoiled. I been trying to keep him away from the shit that I went through. That’s my life, y’know: It’s him.

 

JM: Do you see yourself in him at all?

 

He got my temper; he’s got my fucking laziness, procrastination. I mean, he’s always had passion. He won a scholarship to Ireland. When they came back and they were looking to do some fund-raising, all these kids had their speeches on paper. I’m sitting there and Darren ain’t got nothing written down. He went up there, he killed them. Just off his passion.

JM: That must have been a proud moment for you when he went up to that microphone.

 

Oh, yeah. When he went for his college scholarship, in the interview they asked him what he’d learned from his parents. He talked about his mom and her commitment, this, that, and the other thing. And they were all sitting at the table and they said, “Well, what’s the most important thing your father taught you?” He said, “That’s simple: The Yankees suck.” [laughs] I was a proud dad that day he won the scholarship. For the most part he’s a good kid. He’s a likable kid. All the kids he grew up with, he was the only one that had both parents. I was the neighborhood dad. This place here, we’re all shareholders. It’s a co-op. It’s run by the tenants themselves. HUD actually owns the mortgage, but we’re self-sufficient.

 

JM: You weren’t worried at all about coming back? The way some guys cope is that they move to be away from the neighborhood.

 

Jay, if I moved, I was bringing me, know what I mean? So I couldn’t get away from me. So it doesn’t matter where the fuck I lived, I still had Frank. I just had to change Frank. And that’s what I try to do. And then there’s Carla. She does it all. Girl makes the money. Smart girl. She’s a CPA without being a CPA.

 

JM: So how’d you hook up with her in the first place? That was in your heyday. You were nineteen. It must’ve taken some charm, y’know, because at that time you were bringing some baggage with you.

 

Oh, yeah, and I put her through fucking hell the first seven years. And I put her through hell again when I went out and fucking relapsed.

 

JM: Tell me about that.

 

I had an injury, fucked up my back, got prescriptions. And got more prescriptions for the opiates. And got a couple of doctors. It was nuts. I’m an addict, and I was the last one to realize I was hooked. I was getting these prescribed, so it was justified, and then the habit kicked in, and after that, you gotta do what you gotta do. I kept doing meetings but I just couldn’t get clean. Just couldn’t get clean. I just couldn’t get rid of the street-corner mentality after I was getting high. I went right back to that. I’m a project kid. I went right back to the project kid in my head even though I was older. Now these fucking young boys are running out there, and I was out there running with the young boys, Stoney’s kids, actually. They’ve been through a ton of shit.

 

JM: And was there a certain attraction to that, y’know, being back?

No, no. I just needed to fucking play the game to get high. Did I want to be there? Absolutely not. I wanted to be home with my family. Just caught up in addiction. You start networking where I was getting scrips, you start to learn who gets scrips, who’s getting it this week: “I’ll give you some until I get mine.” It’s fucking madness, it’s just madness. It’s a full-time job just getting high. Sucked. I learned from it. I learned that I don’t want to go through it again. And just trying a day at a time to stay clean. With God and AA.

 

JM: How did Carla cope with it all? Did she see you going back to twenty years ago?

 

Oh, yeah, I put her through fucking hell, whacking fucking ATM cards, getting cash advances. It was crazy, madness. Why she stayed, I don’t know. I wouldn’t’ve. But she did.

 

JM: That was how long ago?

 

I been clean now twenty-two months. I mean, I was fucked, and she stuck by me.

 

JM: Affected your job?

 

Yeah, it affected the fucking job. Some of the old veterans and shit were supplying me. But I’ve always been a worker.

 

JM: So how did you get out of that cycle for the second time?

 

Well, I kept going to meetings. I got hooked on a weird drug for terminally ill patients, the patches with the seventy-two hours. I would bypass that by cutting it open and licking it. And then I heard a kid, he spoke of how he was hooked on it, and what helped him with the withdrawals. I went to my primary care doctor and we set up a game plan. It worked.

 

JM: When you see the other guys, the ones that have really continued to struggle, what do you think?

 

I feel for them. I pray for them every day. Fucking addiction. It sucks. They gotta get clean, first and foremost. Gotta get clean. Can’t do nothing while you’re getting high.

 

JM: There’s addiction, but are there other things that play into it?

 

Did ya make a fuckin’ independent choice to get high? No. You dug yourself a hole, you got a record, it’s all built up. It’s a bunch of shit. I just don’t think they know there’s hope. If I wasn’t blessed with Carla, I wouldn’t be where I am today. God bless her. Growing up, you never lose the project kid in your fucking head. You still have it.

 

JM: But as a project kid, if you can imagine growing up in a completely different environment, even with your propensity for addiction, would it have been a lot different?

 

Yeah, I probably wouldn’t’ve had a record. I was always a bright kid. But I was always an O’Sullivan. From first grade, I was just another O’Sullivan. And that wasn’t a good thing. Shorty had the same—he was a Flanagan. Steve and them—they made their own fucking reps, where me and Shorty, our brothers made our fucking reps. And when you put fucking Clarendon Heights on a job application, that was a stitch up.

I had to do everything I did to be the man I am today. Am I sorry for some of the shit I did? Absolutely. But I know deep down I was always a good guy. I just did some fucked-up shit. A lotta it is just fear. I know a lotta my aggressiveness was fear, masked fear.

 

JM: Of?

 

Just fear. Fear of anything. Growing up in fear. In my house I never knew when I was going to get cracked. The only place I could go to fucking have peace of mind was in the closet. I got cracked in the head just for grabbing an extra scoop of potatoes.

 

JM: Was there ever a sense, because you were a bright lad—I’m thinking about when you were eleven, twelve, thirteen years old—were you aware then that there was another option: to go for it in school?

 

No, absolutely not. Not living in the projects. I woulda been looked at different, I wouldn’t have been one of the boys. Absolutely not.

 

JM: Did you ever get fed up with the society that dealt you that hand?

 

Was I angry? Absolutely. Did I despise fucks like you? Absolutely. Every fucking kid in the projects looked at Barneys, college students—we useta go Barney-hunting. I’d fucking whack guys just for being a college student. I look at that today and that was nonsense. But I was fucking mad.

 

JM: But that anger, tell me about that.

 

The anger was just hopelessness, I guess. Always being looked at differently. Knowing. We were the kids who were never invited to your party but we came anyways. We were project kids. And we knew that. And other people knew that. My perception is that people are looking at me as if I was less than. How do you overcome that? You impose your will upon ’em. All I knew was what I’d been taught. We had four fucking blocks. All I knew was my ’hood. I didn’t care about fucking America or any other fucking place.

 

JM: But when you turn on the telly and you’re watching the shows, seeing kids going on holidays, having these things . . .

 

I would have dreams of not being me. But I was who I was, and I had my boys back then. That was big to me. That was big. That’s all I had.

 

JM: Do you miss that?

 

No. I feel bad for the boys, though. I feel like I mighta been a part of that, the influence of them fucking up. Like Stoney and Chris, I kinda feel a little responsible for the way they turned out. Because they were very fucking impressionable.

My sponsor, the guy I was tellin’ you about, the ex-armored car man, he was the type of guy that we looked up to, growing up. He’s taught me that doing the right thing is okay, because doing the right thing definitely wasn’t okay back then, it was weakness. You let your guard down, you can open yourself to be hurt, and it’s just something you never did. You never accepted help. I look back now at all the programs, all the social workers, all the psychs we’ve seen, and the walls just went up. That was a defense mechanism.

It’s like the hate we had towards James, Craig. It’s not like these guys were aggressive, but these dudes were intruding, and how that looks to our crew, you couldn’t be weak. Individually, they were pretty cool. But as a whole, listen, those were our basketball courts, those were our parks, that was our project for years. That was ours. It was fought for. It was fought for and won by the guys before us, and it was our jobs to maintain it. That’s the way we were looked at.

 

JM: How do you look at it now?

 

We had a reputation to uphold, and even though you came across fearless, there was a lotta fear involved. And stuff that I wouldn’ta did straight, with some booze and drugs in me, it very easily became sociopathic behavior, whatever you wanna call it. Because I was an altar boy, I was brought up with values, but in the game we were playing, you couldn’t have those. There wasn’t room for that. There wasn’t room for caring.

 

JM: But there was a solidarity with each other.

 

Absolutely. That’s what we had. We had each other and that was it. Y’know what I mean? We had each other and that was it, and it was us against the world. We were project kids. We were just always looked down on.

I’m a union man now. There is still brothers and sisters I work with, and it is us against them. Management is up, and we are us, and we stick together, cover each other’s back. Someone fucks up, we try to cover the fuckup. We police ourselves. So, yes, it’s still kind of that way for me.

 

JM: Throughout your working life, have trade unions served you well?

 

Absolutely. If you’re a white male, you need to have. If I was a black guy, I’d have a great job right now, no question in my mind. The opportunities are there. But being a fucking working white stiff, you gotta have connections. Like where I am now, these black guys that work there, they got it off the street. I wouldn’ta had a shot at this job off the street, not even close.

 

JM: The other way to look at it is that you’ve got access to connections that others don’t.

 

Let’s put it this way: White guy trying to become a cop, you better score a hundred or you’re not becoming a cop. I still believe the best man should get the job. If I scored a ninety-five and if a black guy scored an eighty-five, he’s getting the job today. Does that make it right?

 

JM: I don’t know what the figures are now, but back in 1991, the fact of the matter was that a white high school graduate was making more than a black college graduate in the local economy. So actually, on balance, they’re getting screwed.

 

I find it pretty comical that the American black is bitching about the fucking Asian taking his job. Because that’s what I was doing. The Portuguese was our beef: fucking Portegis taking our fucking jobs. Portuguese are saying the same things about the Salvadorans, the Haitians. That’s it, we’re focusing on us, and not the real issues. The real issue is that not everyone’s got a shot in this country; they just don’t, and some people are just privileged.

 

JM: Is that a disparity between blacks and whites or a class thing between rich and poor?

 

I believe it is a class issue. The rich white guy wants the poor white guy and the poor black guy to not like each other. As long as we’re not liking each other, we’re leaving them alone. I believe we’re in the same boat. But we’re just too fucking focused on each other. And the Rothchilds, the Rockefellers, they’re getting over. Especially nowadays with Bush in fucking charge, the rich are getting richer. But I have my options. Got my cabin up north, my bills are fucking paid. Leave me and my family alone, we’re going to be cool. All I want to do is get my kid educated, leave him some land, because there’s a rumor they’re not making any more of that. I’m fighting for my family.

 

JM: Is there no room for fighting that fight but also fighting for other people?

 

I was a union official. But since the heart attack it’s been a little different. I’ve had five or six guys approach me and ask me to run for steward, but I told ’em, “Look, I had a heart attack, and I just can’t do it.” I can’t get caught up in that, y’know? It takes a fight, and I need to pick my fights a little more wisely because I exhaust a lotta energy in whatever fight I pick. My fights are going to be for my family today. I can’t be fighting for everybody. Those days are over.

 

JM: Could you see yourself in management? You’ve got the skills.

 

It wouldn’t happen. It won’t happen. I’m not management material. I couldn’t do it.

 

JM: Because?

 

I wouldn’t want the responsibility.

 

JM: What is it about the responsibility?

 

I look at these managers now, and they’re looking at guys as guys. I mean, I’m working with some active dope addicts. Everybody has a wife and kid. Jay could be an asshole. Well, what did Jay’s wife and kid do to me? So I look at you differently. And if I was management, I couldn’t work that way. I’d have to look at you.

 

JM: Have you been in management in any of your jobs?

 

No, but just about every crew I’ve been on, I’ve just naturally came to the top. At Howard’s in Housing, I ran that building, even though there was management higher than me that ultimately was supposed to take the responsibility of running the show. I was a laborer but in actuality I ran the building.

 

JM: Tell me about the heart attack.

 

I was up at my summer home last July. And I had some bologna. I had craved for fried bologna, some nice project steak. [laughs] And went to bed. Woke up, burped, could taste the bologna. Had this serious burning pressure. Thought I had indigestion. So went back to bed. Woke up the next day, still had it. Drove back down here. Took a nap, woke up, still had it. Went up to the hospital and told me I had a heart attack. Not much damage. They gave me a stent. Good enough.

 

[Frankie’s wife, Carla, and son, Darren, come home, and after tea and coffee are made, they join the conversation.]

 

JM: [to Carla] You’ve gone through some really rough times and you’ve stayed with him. There must have been some dark days, and you stuck to it.

 

CARLA: There’s qualities in him that I saw from the very beginning that other people probably didn’t see. And I was very naive. I was not a drug user as a teenager. There were probably warning signs that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know any better.

 

FRANKIE: What about my last bout?

 

CARLA: Yeah, well, then I became quite intelligent. I could do the drug sweep. I could tell each and every time he was high. That set me right off, and then I would tear this house apart. I would go out and tear the car apart, and I’d confront him and I’d confront him and I’d confront him. And he struggled with it, and I guess he had a determination to stop doing it, but I think I had a determination to make sure he stopped doing it. Y’know, he came very close to not being a resident of this household. Extremely close to not being a resident of this household.

 

DARREN: She kept more faith in him than I did, because she talked to me about it and I said, “Yeah, kick him out,” because I was sick of it myself.

 

FRANKIE: And now I’m trying to tell her to kick you out. [laughs]

 

DARREN: She has more faith in both of us than any one of us have in ourselves, I guess.

 

JM: Going way back, when you first got together . . .

 

CARLA: We met at church. [laughs] That’s what we tell people. It was the railroad tracks behind the church.

 

FRANKIE: I was drinking behind the church. [laughs]

 

JM: When you look at the way these different guys have ended up, relationships have been crucial. The ones that have developed a relationship with somebody who has stood by them and been a positive influence, that’s made a huge difference.

CARLA: And I think that might have made the difference. I didn’t have those issues, don’t necessarily understand them. My father’s an alcoholic, but my mother divorced him when I was very young, five. We grew up alone.

 

JM: [to Frankie] Looking back, one thing I never asked you guys about was domestic violence. Knowing these guys as you did, was that a big thing in these households?

 

FRANKIE: How many of us actually had fathers? Shorty’s old man never was. Stoney had no old man, I had no old man, Chris had no old man, Boo-Boo had no old man, Slick and Sean had no old man. Jinx’s the only one that had a father. There was domestic violence in my house. Absolutely there was violence in every home. But moms kicked your ass back then. I can remember times that Bobbie, Jinx’s ma, hit me, and if I went back and told my mom that Bobbie gave me a whack, I was getting whacked again because Bobbie didn’t whack me for nothing. That’s just the way the ’hood was, and that wasn’t a bad thing.

 

JM: One of the Brothers said that’s why he didn’t get into more trouble, because he knew his dad would beat the hell out of him. Now, without really thinking about it, that’s the posture he adopts with his kids. He doesn’t beat them but it’s based on fear.

 

FRANKIE: The most intimidating words to a kid should be, “I’m telling your father.” That should terrify a kid. You’ve got to have some kind of control, but how many kids can you use that threat?

 

CARLA: “I’m telling your father” to him didn’t mean a thing! He wasn’t afraid of you because you were more like his buddy.

 

JM: Where did Darren go to school?

 

CARLA: He went to Dunning. We were coming from Salford and I didn’t know any better. I thought you were supposed to go to Hoover. They told me Hoover was full. Then I said, “Well, okay, Dunning.” I didn’t know he could go to any school in the city. If I had known that, I would have did a little bit more research and—

 

FRANKIE: Dunning wasn’t one of your better fucking schools.

 

CARLA: And then when he graduated from eighth grade you have to apply for the high school House where you want to go. And House A was the more academic, college-level program, and one kid out of his whole entire class was selected to go to House A, and everybody else was kind of streamed into what they called Fundamental. I had to go up and sit before some people at the high school, then fight and explain to them why I wanted him in House A.

 

FRANKIE: Like 19 percent of people of color in the city, yet 60 percent of your enrollment in high school is of people of color. For the money they’re spending per pupil, it’s a madhouse up there.

 

JM: So how did you get on in high school?

 

DARREN: Uh, underachiever. I think I’m lazy. I always did well in history.

 

FRANKIE: Shit that interests him: Che, Chomsky, that kind of stuff.

 

CARLA: Otherwise he doesn’t really apply himself.

 

DARREN: I’m a militant socialist. It’s not that we’re talking about a coup but by whatever means necessary.

 

JM: Why don’t we elect a socialist government?

 

DARREN: I think it’s because of a lack of unity between poor blacks and poor whites. In this country everything’s brought out to be due to race and religion. The government keeps feeding that to us, saying, “Let’s take this white guy and this black guy, and then you’re going to go for a job,” and sometimes the white guy is going to get the job, sometimes the black guy is going to get the job, whether they’re qualified for it or not, because of racial quotas, affirmative action, and whatnot. That just keeps putting poor whites and poor blacks against one another. Race becomes the issue every time, and it’s a class issue.

 

FRANKIE: There’s no media outlet for our class. The Jews run the media, and that’s just a fact. I’m going to come across racist, but what the Jew media gives to America, that’s what we’re getting. And if the Jews get the working-class white guy more worried about the working-class black guy, it’s easier for them to do what they do.

 

JM: We were just talking about class, but immediately you draw back in race and ethnicity.

 

FRANKIE: No, because that’s ultimately who runs the media. How is the working-class guy gonna get the word out when the media is owned by people who care less what the fuck you’re gonna say? If you gave the working-class guys an outlet and that if we stick together we can actually do something here. Even unions, there’s no consolidation, each union is so worried about their own body. There was a early retirement bill coming up in the statehouse, so there was a hearing, and in the hearing all the unions had their representations: Teachers union showed up with like twenty lawyers, the police, the firemen. Everybody divvied up and started fighting each other.

 

DARREN: There’s a real lack of solidarity.

 

FRANKIE: I loved what happened in the WTO [World Trade Organization] in Seattle, but it got washed right under. They’re showing the people smashing the windows. The longshoremen had a great rally, the Teamsters had a great rally there; you didn’t see any of that on the news. You seen the guys breaking the window, kids throwing paint balloons. Why? Because they don’t want you to see that.

What’s wrong with this nation is the CEO. What are they making, something like 360 times a laborer? Everything’s about the stockholder, so they say. Who’s the stockholder? It ain’t me. These CEOs are losing billions and still getting their bonuses. The CEO for the biggest refinery in Texas, he’s making $850 million off of stocks this year. It’s sick. It’s crazy.

It’s come to the point where it’s not even a class issue in America. It’s a world class issue because it is such a global economy. We’ll outsource it to India. What are you going to do? Unless you get these other countries on board to start making labor laws, we’re screwed.

One of your biggest illegals in this state is the Irish. As long as they’re hiding out, they ain’t got no voice. Business takes advantage of them, puts them in unsafe working conditions. Once again it’s the rich getting richer. They ain’t paying health benefits for these people. Pay taxes, compensation, insurance on these people, they’re not doing that. A guy has either come here legally or a guy who was born in this country got a wife and kids, trying to support himself, and he can’t get the job. It’s just not right. But it’s America. I can’t worry about that. Whether I’m giving up or whatever, I believe I’m dealt the hand I’m dealt. We’re not in the ideal world and I’ve accepted that. I got to just take care of me.

 

CARLA: There’s always hope.

 

FRANKIE: I became morally spent, spiritually bankrupt at one point, and that was my bottom, and now it’s new. It’s a new life. I believe this is what God has given me, and I’m blessed. A great wife, and I didn’t get a bad kid. This was as good as it was going to get and it came because God gave it to me; it was an act of Providence. This is definitely unmerited. Did I waste some qualities that I had, that are just naturally given to me? Absolutely. I maintain the highways. I like my job, I enjoy my job, I’m doing something different all the time. Working nights sucks, but I make the highway a safer place.

JINX

Stuck Around

Jinx is the only Hallway Hanger who still frequents the neighborhood. I found him at his son’s Little League game, a few yards from the court where I’d spent so many hours playing basketball with the Brothers. Jinx was leaning against the waist-high center field fence with two workmates, a can of beer in his hand, and the remains of a twelve-pack at his feet. He glanced up and exclaimed, “Hey, hey, look who’s over from merry old England. What the hell, the queen kick you out? I heard you were looking for me.” He grinned widely, ignored my extended hand, and embraced me. His hair was mostly gray and his grin revealed missing and blackened teeth, but this was the same easygoing Jinx, somehow both spirited and resigned. We watched the game and chatted. When his son Jason turned a line drive over second base into a home run thanks to fielding errors, Jinx led the cheering. And when Jason struck out next time up and trudged out to his center field position, Jinx shouted, “Hey, keep your head up; it was just a good pitch.” Jinx’s older sister arrived, held up a joint, and led Jinx and one of his workmates over to the trees past right field to light up. “Sorry about that,” Jinx said, chuckling, on his return. “Still gotta have my weed. That’s one thing that ain’t changed.” He told me that his twenty-year-old son, Matt, is in jail. Jinx also explained ruefully that he and his long-term girlfriend broke up some ten years ago and that he ended up with her older sister. Jinx now lives with her and Jason in an apartment in Emerson Heights, a public housing development a half mile from Clarendon Heights. Racial tension between the two projects led to street violence in the 1970s and ’80s. When I interviewed Jinx at his home, I got the distinct impression that some white friends rely on Jinx to source marijuana and cocaine from the neighborhood rather than relate to black dealers themselves. Back in doorway 13, Jinx was something of a peacemaker between the white and black members of the Hallway Hangers. Twenty-five years later he’s still putting his poise and personal skills to use, if not always to good use.

 

 

 

JINX: I work on a crew doing landscape gardening. Just a small group of guys, but we do some big jobs. Japanese gardens, terraced, all on different levels. My boss, the designer, he knows what the fuck he’s doing. It’s funny, when we start tearing up people’s yards, they go crazy, “Whaddya doing?” But when we finish they love it. All the neighbors gather round to admire the work. He [the boss] divides the yard into four or five sections, and in his mind he knows where he’s going with it. Two weeks ago that yard had piles of dirt six feet high, a real mess. Now it’s beautiful. People hate you when you start but love you when you finish. It’s a good feeling when you finish the job and you can see what the fuck you’ve done. It’s not like other jobs. You can see what you’ve accomplished. It’s not a skill or a trade. It’s a fucking art form. Our boss, he is an artist. I’m making twelve-fifty an hour, which ain’t bad. A couple of guys work under the table and then a few on the books. The boss is actually a decent guy. I work my ass off. It is fucking physical work, bull work. Digging, moving fucking stones, and your body just ain’t taking this shit. Running wheelbarrows of fucking rocks and shit up hills. Every now and then you just gotta take a breather, have a cigarette. And he understands that. He’ll bust your balls: “Oh, man, what the fuck, you outta shape, fucking weakling?” He’ll bust your balls about it, but he ain’t mistreating you, he’s only doing it to bust your balls. You’re being treated fairly. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s making the money, but it’s not like he’s out making fucking millions of dollars either. He’s making his money, but he treats you fairly. I mean, he’s a good fucking guy.

Before that I worked at an automotive warehouse. Started out there at eight bucks an hour. The year I left they made a profit of $365 million. They owned thirty warehouses and three hundred automotive stores in the United States. I worked there for four years, made it to ten dollars an hour, got my brother in there with me. But there was double standards, which I can’t stand. You’re the one busting your balls doing all the work. So I got fired from there because I told my manager to go fuck himself.

 

JM: What was the double standards?

 

What pissed me off is I had the key to open the place. When the alarm went off at night, I’d get a call to go shut the alarm off and shit like that. I mean, I was one of the best workers, but there was this girl that was working there who the assistant manager was in love with. She’d come in at nine o’clock, he’d write her in at eight o’clock. She’d leave at three thirty, he’d punch her out at five thirty. I’m getting yelled at because I’m not staying ’til six o’clock. They’re not even throwing me a bone. I said, “Go fuck yourself.” How can you give 110 percent for somebody who ain’t giving it back to you? If I’m going to be treated fairly—like my boss now, nice guy, never had a problem with him—I’ll work my ass off.

You remember the warehouse I was working in, the nut-and-bolt place? I was running that place for about five years. I was making fifteen dollars an hour there after fifteen years.

 

JM: And you started at, when you first went to that place?

 

Six-eighty. But that was a little family-owned business. I picked up on it very quick, but I had to fight for most of what I got. When I became manager, it just became too much politics. Everything was my fault. There was a lot of stress and aggravation. Plus, I had work to do at home, piecework. I’d bring home three hundred pounds of screws, big boxes, different types of screws and washers, and a bunch of bags with labels on them and sealer. I had my mother doing it, my sister, brother. You had to put five of this, six of that, put bags together, get paid so much per bag, nine cents for every bag you put together. So if you did a thousand bags, you made ninety dollars. Take-home money, under the table, no taxes. I had a digital scale to check every one with because they’d have to be 100 percent accurate. But I got sick and tired of that shit. The boss was selling the company, I was like, “Fuck it, I’m outta here, see ya.”

I went to another job, doing quality control with computers, and the guy that hired me, he had a calcium buildup in his calves, so they cut his calf open, so he was out of work for a little while. He worked there for like thirty years; he was making big money. Well, they figured I could do his job after being there a month. And they fired him when he came back to work. I was heartbroken. I had tears in my eyes. He’s like, “You know what? It’s better you than some fucking foreigner who don’t know English that’s got my job. Good luck to you. Wish you the best.” I was like, “No, this ain’t working, I ain’t staying,” so I gave ’em my two-week notice.

 

JM: So the actual work at each place, these were mostly desk jobs, in an office.

 

Yeah, I can play on a computer; I got no problem working on a computer. I’ve done shipping, check inventory, prices, see how many we’re supposed to have in stock. I can do all that. But it was repetitious. I could predict my day. Every day I woke up, I knew what I had to do. That’s what I like about this job. I can go in tomorrow, figuring I gotta go do this, but my boss will turn around and go, “You’re doing something different.” It’s not the same thing over and over again. I’m very good when it comes to basic math. I should actually—I thought about it a million times—go to become a bookkeeper or an accountant because I love working with numbers. But I can’t sit behind a desk. Believe me, I know there’s money to be made there, but it’s just too aggravating. I like the challenge now, it’s something different. In the warehouse, it’s the same thing: You build a wall and knock it down. Stock coming in, depleting your stock, selling the same thing over and over again, constantly loading and unloading trucks.

 

JM: Any of these jobs, was there ever any benefits, health insurance?

 

The warehouse job, the company paid my medical insurance. I also had sick days, vacation, shit like that. The last job I had medical, had 401(k). It comes out of your check every week. So I put it into a savings account, then when I took it out they penalized me. Gee, it cost me two hundred dollars to let you hold seven hundred dollars of mine. It made no sense, but that’s the way your life rolls. Now this job I got no benefits at all.

 

JM: Within these jobs has there been any sort of career paths, like any ways you could move up?

If I wanted to be an ass-kisser, a brown-noser, a “Yessir” man, I could’ve probably eventually gotten a manager job. Being a big corporation, you only got to go so far and you ain’t gonna get what you really deserve, no matter what. Big companies, you’re just a number. You ain’t even a face, you ain’t even a name. You’re a number. They could give two shits about you. I found out if you work for like a ma-and-pa company, a little family-owned small business, you get treated better. The ideal person you want to work for is somebody who started out just like you did. At the bottom. Was given nothing. Worked his ass off to get where he’s at. He’s the one that will appreciate you busting your balls more. When you work for a little person like that, he says, “Okay, that’s how I was, that was me twenty years ago, busting my ass.” So he gives you more respect and takes care of you better than these other people.

 

JM: Any of these jobs, you ever been in a union?

 

No. Another job I went for was good money, working the night shift, warehousing. Only I didn’t pass the fucking piss test. I’m not giving up my fucking weed, I’m sorry. I can’t deal with life if I don’t have my weed. When I was in the screw place my Christmas bonus was a two-pound can of pistachios, but I got a week’s pay, taxed. The next job I got a candy cane with fucking ten dollars. From a big fucking corporation. If it wasn’t for us little fucking peons, down there in the fucking trenches, busting our balls, guess what: You wouldn’t be a millionaire. The raises you get—ten, fifteen cents a year—the cost of living is going up more than fifteen cents an hour. Come on, now. I can’t even keep up with the cost of living, but I’m supposed to be happy working for you? Nah. Why are all these people millionaires? It’s all about their profit, finding ways to cut corners like everybody else is.

 

JM: Can you imagine a world in which the bigwigs, the owners, the corporate executives are making enough, but the workers are also making a decent wage . . .

 

It’ll never happen. It’s impossible; that’s a miracle.

 

JM: Why?

 

Why? Greed. Bottom line. Greed.

I’ve been working since I was sixteen, busting my ass on the books, having Social Security taken out every fucking week. Now you hear when I’m ready to retire there might not be no more Social Security. Hello? Where’s all the money I put in there for the last forty fucking years? So now I’m going to retire at sixty-five and have nothing.

You look at it, they’re cutting everything for the fucking poor. They’re not trying to bridge the gap, they’re just widening the gap between fucking rich and the poor. They’re cutting the poor, cutting fucking Medicaid, spending more on your military budget. You got other countries that got universal health coverage. There is no health coverage. Everybody’s scamming everywhere. That’s why I never voted in my life and I never will. I’m not even a registered voter, thirty-eight years old and never voted once in my life.

 

JM: But the gap you were talking about between the rich and the poor. You don’t think that voting is a way to—

 

What, my one vote?

 

JM: No, you and all the other working-class guys.

 

I don’t need a fucking politician to be a thief taking money out of my pocket. I’m quite good at fucking blowing my own money. I don’t need someone else to blow it for me. And that’s basically all they are. The only thing they can agree on is to give themselves a fucking raise. Has any politician ever done anything for me? No. My father used to go vote. You know who he’d vote for? Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Fred Flintstone. They can talk a good game: Oh, yeah, we’re here to help the poor.

I’ve grown up seeing people die, getting killed, beaten with bats, chains, beer bottles. That was when I was about ten years old. Harry got killed by the police. They had the riots, blew up two cars. They had a big march to City Hall, all the teenagers and everything. And from there, in the projects, in the back area was predominantly black, the white was all up front. Back then, you remember, the blacks and whites didn’t hang out together. So every night would be a clash of the teenagers sitting out there drinking. There was one fight and the fight turned into a racial war. Tear gas. Chaos. Back then all the roofs were open: You could run up one hallway, run across the roof, down another hallway into someone’s house; the cops would never catch you.

 

JM: There was nothing else underlying the racial tension, it was just . . .

 

Teenagers basically partying. You figure, they were busing the blacks into white communities, so there was a lot of racial tension. Now a lot of white people are bitching more about Brazilians and people coming over, because they’re willing to work for less money, taking money out of our pockets. It ain’t so much about blacks. Now it’s about the new group of foreigners coming in who are taking the jobs, willing to work for less, bust their balls. Someone grew up in this country: “I ain’t working for nothing less than ten dollars an hour.” It’s business. Looking at it from someone owning a company, if I can give you five dollars to do the same job I gotta give him ten to do, I’m going to give you the five dollars, ain’t I? That’s five more dollars every hour in my pocket. That’s now where a lot of the racial tension comes from. Ain’t black and white no more. I hear a lot of bitching about foreigners coming over, they’ll give ’em money to get a house, but you’re born in this country, right? You get nothing. That’s just the way society is; you gotta take it. You get by. Try the best you can.

When you have a kid, it ain’t about you no more. It’s all about doing for the kid, make him better, give him more than I ever had. Try like hell. I love my son dearly, but he’s just got a lot of anger in him.

 

JM: Where’s that anger come from?

 

He always was fighting in school, been in every school in the city. Went from there to youth services, put him in all different programs—social services, youth services. He was in the lockup units. Finally got him a job with me. One day, he was supposed to be working, calls me, “Uh, I’m in jail.” Lost the job. Shit happens. There’s two lives here. I can understand what he’s doing because I work my ass off, I got a roof over my head but nothing to show for it. These young kids on the street, slinging their thing, selling their drugs, they got brand-new cars, they got all the women, all the jewelry, pocket full of money. But where’s that life gonna lead you? You’re gonna end up dead or in jail. But a twenty-year-old kid, I can tell you my advice, but you do what you want. It sucks, it breaks my heart, but it’s just the way life goes.

 

JM: What sort of ways did you, over the years, try to influence him?

 

I got him a job, I’ve talked to him. There was one thing I did. He was being picked on by a lot of the kids, always taking advantage of him, using him. Back then I was doing the same thing, sold my shit [drugs], I always had money, so I spoiled him, and his friends took advantage, his so-called friends, and they used to hit him. Well, one day I got tired of it and gave him the Wiffle ball bat and said, “Go downstairs and play with them. First one that fucks with you, crack ’im upside the head with it; he’ll never fuck with you again.” He sure as much did it. Now nobody will fuck with him. He’s to the point, “Worst that can happen, they’ll kill me, but I’m not going to be anybody’s pansy, I’m not going to let no one shit on me no more.” Growing up in the streets, especially in the projects, you gotta have some street mentality. You cannot go around being a little pansy and having somebody turn around and take everything you got or everything you earned, and then running scared from them. I don’t care if you lose the battle, you stand up and fight. He ain’t going to want to fight you again. Because he’d rather go pick on someone who ain’t going to fight with him.

 

JM: It’s a fine line, though, isn’t it, because these same kids who at twelve, thirteen, fourteen get that reputation for never backing down . . .

Well, my kid got that now, and nowadays it ain’t like when we were growing up. We’d have a fistfight; the next day we’d be sitting there having a beer. Nowadays they got guns, knives. It’s nothing to pull a trigger.

 

JM: So for a kid in the projects, it’s tough, because on the one hand he’s got to stand up for himself, but as soon as they do that, then they get in that thing where their credibility, their respect, comes from being the tough one.

 

Right. And they can’t turn back. After you put your first foot down, you cannot go back. If you put your foot down and say, “I’m not taking no more shit,” and then you let someone shit on you after that, you’re going to deal with your friends: “Pussy, you little faggot.” It’s all peer pressure.

 

JM: But when you take that dynamic on the streets, and then suddenly when you’re in school . . .

 

It’s a fine line. As far as schooling goes, now there are a lot of people who put their minds to school, but for a kid growing up in the projects, what are they looking at? Are they looking at you going to bust your ass to make ends meet, working eight hours a day, coming home tired as a dog, filthy and shit? Every project has their drug dealers with women, jewelry, car, living life large. To them it’s an easier way out, but they don’t look at the other consequences.

But then how many of them that went to school, got that great-paying job, got the steady career? I’m interested to know. Because I still hear of a lot of people out there with degrees who can’t find work. Society has changed, like it does constantly. You gotta find out a field that is on the boom, that is hiring. You gotta follow the fields that society wants. If you’re going to go to school, you gotta hit it at the right time in that field, then get that job before society changes, and there’s an increase for another field.

It’s a learning process. Being a parent is a learning experience. It’s what you feel in your heart. There are things I regret, but then there are things I’m glad that I’ve done. You just hope you do the right thing, but if you don’t, you just try to make it go the best way it can. Kids are going to make their mistakes. They’re going to screw up. No one’s perfect in this world.

Like I tried telling my son, I grew up in the projects, been arrested, never did time in jail. Why? Because I can read somebody. I know somebody is going to get in trouble, I’m walking away before it happens. “See ya later.” You can’t call me a turncoat, didn’t stick up for you, cuz I wasn’t there.

 

JM: Your younger son, how old is he?

 

He’s twelve now. How he’s taken care of, as far as the discipline and that shit goes, what goes on in his life, that’s her call. Because she don’t want me to do what I did with Davey. But he’s going through the same things, and me knowing how it is growing up.

Becoming a teenager, now it’s time he’s going to try solving his own shit. I did the same thing. My brothers, my father used to tell me, “What are you doing? Why’d you do that? You watched your brothers go through it and all, and always got in trouble and got caught, but you do the same thing. What are you, stupid? Hello?” When I was a kid, even though I watched them do it and get in trouble, I had to do the same fucking thing.

There are days I say I should have stayed in school—it’s not like I didn’t have the intelligence or the knowledge. And there are times I say I should’ve done what my brother did and went right in the service. Which I didn’t do. I made a choice and I lived with it. Davey was born. I had the opportunity to go in the army; I chose not to. I wanted to be around for him, and that was my choice. Things didn’t turn out the way I planned, but what can I do? I can’t turn the hands of time back. You gotta try to go on and make the best from this moment on. If you sit back and look at all the failures and all the things that happened wrong in your life, you might as well just go put yourself in a rubber room.

 

JM: What about your relationships with women? Are there things that you would have done differently or regret or . . .

 

I’ll tell you right now: The only woman that I’d ever marry would be a woman like my mother, which I never met. The two I have had, Beth and her, love them dearly, but shit. Put it this way: could be better. Couldn’t be much worse. But it’s hard to walk away once children are involved. As I say, go with the punches, go with the flow. Like that, weeble, wobble, but we don’t fall down.

 

JM: How’s the child-support thing affecting people?

 

Uhh, well, I don’t pay for him. Because on the books I’m not his dad. I been with him since he was born, but my name ain’t on the birth certificate. For Michael, I paid for twenty years. Most of the time he was taken away, put in placements, so I was paying child support and going to visit him, giving him money, so I was getting a double jeopardy. I got sick of paying child support, so I stopped. Called them up, said, “Lookit, where’s the money going that I’m paying?” In an escrow fund. Hell with the escrow fund. So I stopped paying, but then the IRS screwed me. So I ended up paying for twenty years. They intercepted them every year.

But then it’s how you were brought up, responsibility. You have a kid, what are you gonna do? You gonna walk away or you gonna try and stay in his life, or her life? It’s choices you make.

I chose to stay here, to stick around. Everyone who’s done anything has got outta here, away from here. I hate to say it, but it’s true.

SHORTY

All Bull Work

Shorty lives only a few blocks from Clarendon Heights, but it was difficult to discover his address. And I was in no big hurry to speak with him. We’d never related well, and if street gossip was anything to go by, Shorty was still emotionally unstable and prone to fits of violent temper. One Hallway Hanger advised against being in a room alone with Shorty. So when I rang the doorbell at the address his older brother had provided, part of me was relieved when there was no answer. But I was flying back to England the next day, so I kept ringing and knocked and called his brother’s cell phone. “He’s in there sleeping,” I was told. “Keep making a racket. Hell, it’s nearly noon; he oughta get his ass up anyway.” Sure enough, the door opened, and there was Shorty, wrapped in sheets and squinting at me. “What the fuck?” I reminded him who I was and about Ain’t No Makin’ It and asked if I could come in to talk to him. “What the fuck?” he repeated but held the screen door open and led me upstairs to his tiny one-bedroom apartment. Shorty struggled up the stairs, so much so that I listened to hear his joints creaking. Shorty doesn’t have much of a neck, giving the impression that his large, open face rests directly on his compact, squarish body. Shorty apologized for the mess, sank into the couch, and said he had about twenty minutes before he needed to get going. He then spent over an hour relating the details of his troubled life. His account is hardly free from self-delusion (what account is?), but Shorty was far more forthcoming than I had any right to expect.

 

 

 

JM: Can you tell me the sort of jobs you’ve had?

 

I’ve been doing roofing and carpentry. With my son’s uncle. He’s unbelievable, one of the highest-paid carpenters around. Knows his stuff. I’ve been outta work for the last year because I get spinal ulcers and separated discs. I’m going back to work with him soon, to save some money up. He calls me a lot, “When you coming back?” He knows I’m a good worker. Like a bull. But I always tell him too, “[If] I come back, I ain’t fucking doing all bull work.” I like doing finish work and stuff. Doing all the carting and shit like that, digging holes, pouring forms, sledge-, jack-hammering: I don’t like doing that no more. Carrying shit up the forty-foot ladder nobody else can carry. “Oh, Shorty will carry it.” [laughs] Fuck that. Killing my back. My back’s gonna kill me the rest of my life. In ’94 I got hurt on the job, had back surgery. I got twenty-four grand from the company I worked for and I got twenty-one grand from the government because I went on disability. I tried to go back to work, and I couldn’t, so you sign up for disability, and it took them two years to approve me, and that’s all retroactive. I got screwed. I had a shitty fucking lawyer. I shoulda got over a hundred grand. I fucking had two back surgeries and then I have back pain for the rest of my life; I got twenty-four grand. The owners were cool about it; they knew it was legit; it ain’t like I faked it. Furniture company, I was moving furniture. They owned a bunch of stores. They were very good people. I got hurt, I went back to work, and really I couldn’t do it no more, so I went and got the MRI done and all that shit. And they said a herniated disc right on my sciatic nerve. Every time I sat down or got up I was in pain. I couldn’t move at all. That’s why I had the surgery. And then I went back into construction, after like seven months off. And it just gets worse, carrying fucking bundles that weigh seventy-five pounds, and then rolls of tar paper and all the other shit. I put them all on both shoulders and hug a ladder like that, and fuck, that doesn’t help. I already had two surgeries on it, and now they wanna give me another one. I refused it. So I go to physical therapy, get steroid shots, eat medicine. Sharp pains every day, sciatic nerve.

 

JM: What do you take for that?

 

Percoset, Oxycodone, but I’m all out. [laughs] I got my prescriptions in there. It’s very expensive. I got insurance, but sometimes when I get the prescriptions too early, they won’t fill ’em. If I need money, I’ll just sell some of my medicine. When I go back to work I’ll be all right.

 

JM: The settlement money come to you all at once?

 

One check came, and then about five months later another check came.

 

JM: So what did that feel like when you opened the mail and there’s a check for—

 

It was already gone! All the fucking money I was borrowing. I owed like eight grand outta one and ten grand outta the other. From my family I borrowed a lotta money cuz I wasn’t working. I haven’t been hitting the bars or nothing. I’m a good boy, I’m out of trouble. I haven’t been in a bar in like ten years. That was all I used to do when I go to bars was fight all the time.

 

JM: Do you manage to keep that discipline—not going into the bars?

 

I know if I go, I go back to prison. I got a kid now. He’s twelve.

 

JM: I heard that. People said I’d catch you at a game in the park where he plays Little League.

 

He’s playing in New Hampshire now. She took him up to New Hampshire. We bought a cottage, a boat, she took everything, lied to me, said she was going to give me custody of the kid, so I didn’t fight her in the court. She took my kid up there this last October. I tried to commit suicide. I slit my wrists. I called ’em up to say goodbye, he [Shorty’s son] got nervous, told his mother, and she came over here and called the cops. It was pretty bad. I lost a fucking lot of blood. She come up here, and beneath this couch is a puddle. I was in a coma for a day, in the hospital for a month. I was in a state, hearing voices and everything. I just snapped. And I wasn’t even drinking when I did this, either. That’s what everybody, my family, was asking me: “Hey, were you fucking bombed?” I drank only four beers, I think it was. She took my son. He’s my life and she took him away. I was fucking devastated. I was like, “I ain’t gonna see him no more, so ain’t bother living.” That was it.

 

JM: Did you get any help after that?

 

While I was in the hospital I seen a psychiatrist or whatever. I came out, and I’m like, “I ain’t gonna go.” I stopped taking the medicine, everything. They gave me some depressant pills, I didn’t take none of it. I just had a bad moment in life. Get over it, move on. I only had one beer in the last ten days, I haven’t been drinking at all. I haven’t been going to bars.

 

JM: So when you do drink it will be with friends or at home.

 

I don’t got no friends. I go over my brother’s, that’s about it. I don’t know nobody no more. Steve, nuttin’. I talked to Steve once or twice in the last fucking two years.

 

JM: Why’s that?

 

Steve does a lot of drugs. There’s nobody else around. I don’t get along with nobody.

 

JM: What about through work, you don’t meet people?

 

I don’t like ’em. They’re backstabbers. One guy at work, I like him, but he drinks a lot. I try not to drink that much no more, getting old. Fuck it, I want to spend time with my son. I don’t care about nobody else.

 

JM: Tell me about fatherhood, what it was like.

 

It’s awesome. To see him. I wouldn’t hold him at first, I was scared I was going to drop him. I wouldn’t cut the cord or nothing. I was starting crying, I was walking out, I felt like I was high, it wasn’t on no drugs or nothing. That was the greatest high ever in the world. He’s so small, eight pounds. Plus, he’s intelligent. He’ll be in Harvard some day. Everything he does, he’s good at. He plays the guitar, he played the piano. He’s a straight-A student in school. We almost lost him four years ago. From his waist down, all the veins in his body burst, and we’re like, “He’s got a rash or something.” She’s like, “You better take him to the hospital.” And I took him, they took blood, said, “Oh, boy, he’s got HSP.” It’s named after two German doctors, they got no cure for it. If it gets worse, he starts passing blood, he’ll need a kidney. He started passing blood, so that scared the shit out of us. But they give him some steroids, some other kind of medicine to fight the bacteria, and it obviously went away.

She took my son. They told me I couldn’t have kids, and I had one. I changed his diapers, everything. I spent more time on him than she ever did. I got out of work before her, I’d go right home, play with him. I spent all the time with him. She leaves him up there now. She works in the city here, comes down. It’s like 120 miles. She works until seven at night, he’s up there alone. It’s boring up there for him too. New Hampshire. She works three days a week down here, and then the other two days she works on the computer at home. Now I only get to see him like once a week, if I do get to see him. I haven’t seen him since his birthday, a coupla weeks ago. I’m gonna go up this weekend and hopefully pick him up if he doesn’t play his game, because he’s playing up there.

He’s great. I had two guys from Oklahoma State University give me their card; I lost it. Cuz I took him over to a camp in Salford and he hit forty pitches, seventy-eight miles an hour, at the age of ten years old. Thirty-six of ’em in fair territory. Camp with this guy—he played for the Dodgers and the Rockies. Promised him everything, though, Red Sox tickets. He kept breaking my son’s heart, though. I says, “You made my kid cry. Don’t you ever promise this kid nuttin’.” So yeah, scouts were coming there to look at his college students and seeing my kid playing, saying, “How old is he?” And I said, “He’s ten year old.” They said, “What?!” cuz he can hit.

 

JM: How’s that make you feel?

 

Oh, awesome, cuz I taught him. His team last year went 17 and 0 and they lost the last game by an error. It was a bummer. Everybody in the whole city: east, west, north. When I went to his ballgame up there, what a difference. They said, “This is the greatest baseball league in the state,” and they suck, all those rich kids. They can’t play ball like these city kids. I want to get my kid back down here. The fucking team he’s on, they suck. He’s the only one that gets hits; these kids can’t throw, catch, nothing. These city kids are way better.

 

JM: What was the atmosphere like at the game compared to down here?

 

It was all yuppies. All white. I just don’t associate with nobody, not even his mother. Me, my brother, and my friend, I just stay in the outfield.

 

JM: But he appreciates you coming?

He was shocked; he couldn’t believe it. I had him for like a week, and then I dropped him off. His first game was on his birthday and I showed up. He was like, “Aha, my dad.” I bought him these bat gloves, gave him some money, gave him scratch tickets, bought him sneakers. The first fucking game, they stole his bat. I was fucking pissed. He’s crying his eyes out. I’m like, “Don’t worry, I’ll buy you another one.” Fucking rich kids. But he did great in the game and everything. He smacked it. It’s 220 feet up there, and he’s already hit one home run.

 

JM: So he deals with pressure pretty good with you there in the outfield. How often do you get to see him play now?

 

I’ve only saw him once, and he’s played three games. I stay in the outfield because he gets nervous behind home plate.

 

JM: What about his hopes for the future, do you encourage that, or do you say don’t get too high a hopes?

 

No, I encourage it. Stick with the baseball, but stick with the books too, because if not, he wants to be an engineer, an architect. He’ll make it in construction if he doesn’t make it in sports. Engineering or a fucking architect, like his Uncle Floyd, the guy I work for. He’s named after Steve. I don’t wanna taint him with my name. See the pictures there? I’ve got a shitload of ’em. That’s my boy.

 

JM: He’s a good-looking kid. How’d that happen? [laughs]

 

I dunno. His mother’s a fox. We had a professional photographer come down last year during the All-Star Game. He made the home-run derby. His first home run was off his best friend, and it was a grand slam.

 

JM: How’d that make you feel?

 

Awesome. I was so excited, I went out and grabbed the ball. The umpire’s like, “Throw the ball back.” I threw ten bucks, said, “Go buy another one. You ain’t getting this ball.”

 

JM: Looking back, do you think things would have been different for you if you hadn’t grown up in this particular neighborhood?

 

If I’d stayed in school I probably could have had a better job. I hadn’ta been drinking and taking drugs when I was younger, I would’ve had a better job and my own house by now. Instead of fucking being on subsidized housing and all that shit. School means a lot. I try to teach my son that now.

 

JM: Where do you think you would be if you stayed in school?

Probably would have fucking took up something where I don’t have to be doing labor all my life. Definitely something different. Because this is hard labor, doing all that construction shit. And then when you get hurt, you’re fucked. I don’t know how to spell and shit like that; I can’t go back and find another job, a desk job, working on a computer, shit like that. So I gotta do that for the rest of my life.

 

JM: I suppose if you’re working under the table and you get hurt, it’s like it didn’t happen, no benefits, no—

 

Nuttin’. He wants to put me on the books, but if he does, then I lose this apartment; I’ll have to pay fifteen hundred for one fucking bedroom. You shitting me? Fifteen hundred? It’s unbelievable, the price that they get. Two bedrooms, twenty-two hundred. Ridiculous. That’s why we bought the cottage; my plan was moving out there. We rented it for like three years every summer; it was like five-seventy-five a week to rent, and the mortgage is only five hundred dollars a month, and we ended up buying it offa her. You walk from here, out to the front of this house, and there’s the beach, a private one on the lake. The cottage is awesome, right off the lake. Not even a minute, and you’re right at the water.

 

JM: And did you have any trouble getting a mortgage?

 

No, everything went under her name cuz I couldn’t have nothing underneath my name because of disability. I gave her six thousand, and she give four thousand, put that down. And that’s how I got screwed. I did the roof over, I did the side, I jacked it up, it’s like a ranch style now. Winterproofed, everything. A shower, two bedrooms, a big built-in screen porch, L-shape. A big, big dining room and parlor, all opened up. Small kitchen but it’s nice. The whole thing was sinking into the ground. I tore off all the siding, tongue and groove, and I went underneath it and jacked it up. I put in new pressure-coated columns, because all the other ones were rotting. It’s on wetland, so I packed down as far as I can. I put in new windows and doors. I did most of it myself. I spent a lotta my fucking money, this bitch. The women get everything. My brother lost three, four million dollars in property, he just got divorced. His wife got everything. Everything. I thought I had it bad. But like I said, I wanted my kid. I never fought her in court. I coulda won, but she said she was gonna give me my kid. She said you can have custody of your kid. In October she moved to the cottage. She was living down by the projects in her mother’s house, and they wanted fourteen hundred and she was only paying three hundred dollars a month. I didn’t know she was gonna move up there ’til the last minute and take my son. She does shit like that. I didn’t want to fight her over the property or nothing. I paid for everything on my settlement from my back. The cottage was only worth seventy-eight grand, now it’s worth a hundred and sixty-eight, all the work I did on it. And we bought a boat at some yard sale for seven fucking grand, a twenty-four-footer. We go to a yard sale, looking to buy furniture, end up coming back with a boat. She’s like, “I want a boat.” Drove all the way down here, I borrowed money from my mother because my check didn’t come yet, and we financed that. So we gave the guy a seven thousand-dollar check off her credit card, took the boat. I couldn’t believe it: cruising around, fishing, waterskiing, the kid loves it. It’s awesome. Big boat, bathroom in it. Little bed downstairs. It sleeps six, twenty-four-footer.

 

JM: You financed it, so you’re still paying on it?

 

Yeah, she is. Well, she claimed bankruptcy. Since the first of January, you can’t claim bankruptcy no more on credit cards and shit, but she did it before the deadline. She knows, she’s an accountant. That’s fucked. But I don’t care about the boat or the property; I’d rather have him. Let him go up there for weekends. Then the next thing I know she enrolled him in school up there. I was fucking devastated.

 

JM: So much of your hope would be not for yourself, but for him, and that must feel good that you care, but does he ever feel any pressure for him to succeed?

 

No, he’s too young to think like that way. He’s only twelve. He never misses school, he loves school. He said they’re real rich, all the people around him. It’s like a real yuppie neighborhood.

 

JM: You’re able to go up there; there’s no restraining order or anything like that?

 

No. I don’t talk with her. She went to one game drunk; it was embarrassing. It’s a two-hour drive up and a two-hour drive back. I loved it up there, too. Sucked. I’d been with her for like eleven years. Never married her or nothing. We just broke up. I told her I didn’t wanna be with her no more, and she fucking screwed me. I woulda took her to court, woulda got half of everythin’, because I had been with her for eleven years, and seven years is like common-law marriage. Hell, she fucking screwed me. She’s a nutcase. She snaps. A yellow light will turn red, and she didn’t make it through, she’ll start fucking crying, swearing. I’m talking a big-time manic-depressive. Nothing goes her way, she just snaps. She starts getting violent, she’ll throw things. She hit me over the head with a frying pan, the fucking phone, she tried to stab me with a steak knife. Her mother come out and she’s like, “Shorty hit her.” I just give her a backhand, y’know. He’s crying. He used to get bummed out sometimes when I was drinking around his mother. “Dad, stop drinking.” When I would fight with her. He useta yell at both of us for drinking. He’s a good kid, like I said, everything he does is unbelievable, y’know? She’s psychotic. She’s been in and outta mental institutions. She’s taking manic-depressant pills and everything, but she’ll always be like that. She’s been through Prozac, Zoloft, all that shit.

JM: I remember you said before that you ended up in the state psychiatric wing.

 

Yeah, I slit my wrists.

 

JM: Before that, way back.

 

When I burnt the cop’s house down. I was smoking angel dust. They put me in a state mental hospital for nine months. A lotta fruitcakes in there. I was just there because I was high on angel dust and they said I was crazy. I went there for the psychiatric evaluation and the interviews and they kept me.

 

JM: Did you get any treatment? Did it help you at all?

 

Naw, I came out, started drinking again, getting in trouble. But I haven’t been in jail since ’89. Well, yeah, I was: I was broke, I went to collecting money for people and stuff, and this one guy—I knew him too, I loved his parents, they were all very bummed out at me—but I hadda to do it, five hundred bucks, y’know. He fucking ripped somebody off, told on ’em, ratted ’em out. So the guy gave me five hundred bucks, I went in the store, and I had this big wire filled with lead, and I bashed him over the head, fractured his skull, broke his elbow and everything, and I took off. I dropped that down a sewer; the cops never found that. They held me for thirty days, said I was a danger to society, set a hundred and ten thousand dollars, cash, bail. The trial went on for like a fucking year and a half, they wouldn’t drop it—the judges, the DA, they wanted me so bad. My lawyer said, “You’re doin’ time, you’re doin’ telephone digits if you’re found guilty for this. You extorted money; you not only extorted money, you’re like a hit man, hittin’ people for money.” He [the victim] showed up once to court, but then a couple people talked to him. Little neighborhood store, everybody in there knew me, y’know. Just went in there and whacked the fuck. [laughs]

 

JM: What happened to him? How long was he in hospital?

 

Not long. I see him now, he waves, I say, “Hey, how ya doin’?” Naw, he knows. A lotta ’em out there, they know. That’s why I don’t go to bars; I get myself in trouble, shit like that.

 

JM: Did you go through a time where you were doing quite a bit of that, debt collecting, whatever?

 

Aw, fuckin’ did about four or five of them, y’know? People that owe money to other people. They wanna get it. If you kill ’em, they ain’t gonna pay you. Let ’em fucking break their leg or break their arm or something, smack ’em upside the head. Then you’ll get their attention; they’re scared.

JM: Did you find that hard to do? I mean, what was it like, doing that?

 

I didn’t care. That was before I had my son. I didn’t care. Now I’ll think before I do something. Because, hey, if I get caught, I’m gonna lose my son. Oh, yeah, actually, it was when I had my son, when he was a little baby and he useta ask me where I was, and I useta tell him that I was working in California. That’s right. I think he was like three years old. I got bailed out after thirty days but for ten grand. I came back here, started going to bars, and the first night out, I got in two fights in two different bars. That’s fucked-up. My brother was pissed because if I got re-arrested he would lose the ten grand, y’know?

 

JM: So did he lose it?

 

No, they didn’t catch me, and those people didn’t testify. I fought one guy that I knew, this big black guy, and I kicked his ass. First of all, he come and smack me and Steve upside the head—this was earlier in the day—and I says, “Sonny, do that again, I’m tellin’ you right now.” Me and Steve had him in the car, dropping him off; it was pouring out. I told Steve I was definitely gonna kill him. Steve was driving; I told him to get in the front, the black guy. I had a knife ready. I was gonna stab him. I looked at Steve to get the okay, and Steve was all fucking nervous. I was the one going to kill him. You ain’t gonna disrespect me, you fuckin’ nigger. He’s from the projects. He grew up with us. Anyway, I go back in there later that night, I’m taking a leak, and he smacks my fucking head and it hits the tile, and I said, “I told you, you fuckin’ nigger,” and whack. I fuckin’ hit him, and then he tried to throw a punch, and I ducked. He hit the fucking stall, fucked up his hand, and I hit him with an uppercut, and he went down. I just kept kicking him and kicking him. He’s laying in a pool of fucking piss and blood. So then I walked out, grabbed my drink, and the owner was freaking out and everybody said, “Leave, the cops are coming.” So I left, went down to the other bar, and this guy fucking started saying something in Portuguese or whatever, I dunno, and he put this fucking steak knife in my face, and I knocked him out, one shot. Rescue came and got him. I had to jump outta the bar, hide in the bushes, and I could hear all the cops out there talking, saying, “It’s Flanagan, it’s Flanagan.” He just had a fight in the Parkside, he just had a fight at the Cape. Everybody spread out, and I was like, “Aw, shit.” I sat there waiting for a half hour, and I cut through Salford and went to Bromham.

I seen him again a couple days later, he has a big cast on his arm with the wires coming out of it and everything. He walked in the Cape and saw me, says, “Wait for my arm to heal.” I pulled out a knife and I stuck it up under his neck, I said, “Sonny, I’ll fucking harpoon you, you nigger, you ever come near me again,” and that was it. I won’t even carry a shank no more, because I know I’ll fucking use it. But if he fucks around, I’ll just knock ’im around with my hand, the big nigger. I did it once, I’ll do it again. I ain’t afraid of him. I’d kill that nigger.

JM: What are race relations like now?

 

There are a lot of blacks around here, but they don’t bother me. Kids, like when I was at that age, fighting the blacks and the whites. Not me; I’m forty years old now. Ain’t got time to go hanging out outside all night, fucking doing drugs. There’s a lot more dope around, heroin and crack. I don’t do that shit. I don’t really drink that much no more. I had like one beer in the last ten days; before that I probably had like eight beers in fucking two months.

 

JM: Addiction has never been that big of a thing for you?

 

Yeah, when I was younger, mescaline and beer. I was always drinking, seven days a week. Now I don’t really like the taste of beer much no more. I drink Sambuca; I drink like three, four bottles of that, and I ain’t drunk, and I’m talking the big bottles, so it’s like a waste of my money now. [laughs] Like yesterday I drank three bottles of Sambuca when I was in Bromham. Nothing. Anybody else’d be gone after that fucking first bottle, or half of it, y’know. Three pints, that’s a lotta liquor.

 

JM: And when you see some of the other guys . . .

 

Steve’s all fucked-up in drugs, booze. That fucker owes me big bucks. I got him a job, my boss sent him to use the truck, and he told me he had a license. He didn’t have a fucking license, hit two cars, and fucking they wanted to call the cops and everything. “I’ll take care of you, please, I don’t wanna go to jail. I don’t wanna go to jail.” I had to say that I did it, cost me thirty-five hundred dollars over five years for insurance. The rates went up and I got to pay for the fucking thing, and I get the penalty on my license now. He’s s’posed to pay me back; he didn’t give me a fuckin’ penny. I told him, “Fuck you.” Ain’t got no license now, though. I owe on tickets, parking tickets. Soon as I go back to working I’ll pay them. Well, as soon as my credit card comes. I fill out a form, they approved me for a ten thousand-dollar credit card; I could pay the tickets with that.

 

JM: So your bills will be like . . .

 

I pay fifty-four dollars a month for this. Subsidized. It’s a nice, small place. I get a check once a month, six hundred something bucks. I sell some of my pills, I get eighty dollars for one pill.

 

JM: And then child support, presumably . . .

 

Disability pays for it, direct deposit. Plus, I gained some money from my settlement. So he has money when he goes to school. But he’ll get a scholarship anyways, playing ball.

JM: How have you raised him?

 

Go to school. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, none of that stuff. I talk to him about sex. I talk to him about fuckin’ drugs.

 

JM: Looking back, as a kid, what was it like growing up in your household?

 

Crazy, crazy. So many people in the house. It was just chaos. Eleven of us in a three-bedroom, y’know? Bunk beds everywhere. We were always fighting; you got eight boys together. I spent more time out of the house than I did in it, just slept there, really.

My brother died three years ago. Too much drugs, smoking crack, clogged up his arteries. He was forty-two. My mom died, my brother died, and my father died a week after my brother. Three years ago. My mother died a slow death; cancer ate her all up. She was in so much pain. I felt bad for her; you think what she went through in her life, raising all of us, going through World War II, being raped at nine years old by the German soldiers and shit. My father met her over there; he was in the air force and then the navy for eighteen years. I was upset, cried. Why let her suffer like that? She just kept fighting and fighting; it took her like two years to die.

 

JM: What do you think the future holds for you?

 

Doing hard labor, spending time with my son, take it day by day.

STEVE

My Life Sucks

Steve lives with his mother in a small house four miles from Clarendon Heights. When public housing tenants are evicted under the “one strike, you’re out” policy, this is where they tend to end up: in working-class suburbs with small-town social services and big-city problems. Steve wasn’t home at the appointed time, so I chatted with his mom, who remembered me from the Clarendon Heights youth enrichment program. When Steve finally arrived, he was all hugs and smiles and practically bouncing off the walls with euphoric energy, almost certainly cocaine-induced. He looked fit and trim with a full head of hair and the same cocky gait I remembered. Steve had heard of my own career direction. “So you’re a goddamn priest now, huh? How fucking crazy is that?” As I summarized the ecclesiological and theological differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, Steve cut in: “I got it. You’re the kind of priest that can get laid!” He might have been high but he was still sharp. When the laughter subsided I managed to get Steve to sit down on the back porch for the interview. This clearly wasn’t going to be a deeply reflective conversation, but Steve was candid, sliding back and forth between bravado and despair, and easing the strain with humor.

 

 

 

JM: So what have you been up to? In 1991, when I talked to you last, you had been in and out of prison and—

 

I did Bradford in ’92 to ’95. A stabbing. We were drinking in the fucking bar there [next to Clarendon Heights]. Me and my brother Slick. I ended up stabbing this kid in the car, my brother’s friend. I fucked him up. Ended up getting five years in Bradford for it.

 

JM: You served?

 

Thirty-six months on a five-year sentence. Had a fistfight with a cop in jail, prison guard. He fucked with me, so we got into it. [laughs] Got jumped by all the rest of the cops. Wanted to give me five more years but I got off that.

I ended up getting pinched again after ’95; I went back from ’95 to ’97. Assault and battery. I didn’t do it, but the fucking cops framed me and I got screwed. They took pictures of my hands and shit, right? They said my hands were all fucked-up, right? From the fucking beating I gave to her or something. But I never did. I petitioned the court for the photos, and they ended up saying we lost the pictures before the trial. I ended up back inside for two years.

I went to school in ’95, right after Bradford, to be a steam fireman. Got my license, second-class fireman’s license. You can operate big steam boilers, those things that run the hospitals and shit. But you need a state license to do it.

JM: Who was paying the fees and stuff?

 

I paid them; I got a fucking little shit job. I was roofing with my brother. I ended up going to school in the evenings, a twelve-week school. Fucking twelve hundred dollars.

 

JM: Whose idea was that?

 

My brother Curtis’s. He’s like, “Steve, I think it would be good for you; do something with yourself. Get back on the right track.” I actually just went back again because I have to take a refresher course every five years. Thirty hours, cost fucking four hundred and eighty dollars. But when you go to get a job, Jay, I’m an ex-felon. They don’t want to fucking give you nothing, man. It’s hard. It’s very hard. Sucks.

 

JM: Tell me about what jobs you’ve had.

 

I’ve had boiler jobs, painting jobs. Big food companies, laundry places that need the big steam dryers and shit.

 

JM: How would you get the jobs?

 

I would apply for them. But I wouldn’t say that I was arrested or any of that shit. It was easy back a couple of years ago. But I just went for a fucking steam boiler job and they shot me down because they did a CHR [criminal history record] check and fucking found out I was in jail and shit, because I told ’em I wasn’t. I got the job. They had me sign papers and everything. I was s’posed to go in the next day, but they were waiting for the CHR report. They’re like, “See ya later.” Because of my record.

 

JM: How did you react to that?

 

I was fucking pissed. But then again, I lied. Maybe if I told ’em the truth up front, I dunno what could’ve happened, y’know? So it’s been tough. No work. Fucking selling weed here and there. I got an ounce for you right here. [pulls a bag of marijuana from his pocket] It’s good shit, too. You gotta love it, huh, Jay? [laughs]

 

JM: Same old game. But that’s dangerous now, isn’t it?

 

What, the weed?

 

JM: Selling.

No, it’s weed; crack and all that other shit—they’ll kill you. You get fucking years for that. Pot, you can do fucking forty-nine pounds; if you get anything over fifty pounds, you get fucked. Anything under, you’re fucking good to go, you get like a year to six years.

 

JM: And what about yourself? You still do the odd hit?

 

What, crack? Here and there, once in a while. What about you? [laughs]

 

JM: You were telling me about the jobs.

 

They sucked. Nuttin’ steady-like, know what I’m sayin’?

I went to jail ’92 to ’95, and then ’97 to ’99. I’ve been out of jail for ten years. I went away for fucking dumb shit, fighting with my brother and stupid shit like that. But I’ve calmed down a lot. I don’t really beef and all that shit. Remember when we were kids? We used to fucking be in fights all the time. I don’t do that shit no more. I got two daughters, Shelly and Kerry, twenty and sixteen, good girls.

 

JM: And no kids since then? How have you managed that?

 

Jail. Fucking whacking off. [laughs] I’ve been lucking out. I’ve been getting blow jobs. [laughs]

 

JM: Was it hard, when you go from the street, messing about, then when you go into the job, how do you cope with that change? You have to be there a certain time every day.

 

Ya hafta; it’s your livelihood. Fucking just do it. Nobody likes taking fucking orders, Jay. I know you don’t, I know I don’t. But you gotta sacrifice something, to get a little you gotta give a little, right?

 

JM: You’ve been hit for child support all along?

 

They took my licenses for the child support. If you owe back child support, they take your licenses, take your driver’s license and your fireman’s license. Any license you fucking procure. How the fuck do they expect you to work if they take your licenses? How you supposed to pay child support? How the fuck are you supposed to do it, collect cans or something? I didn’t even know I owed the money, because I was paying the fucking broad. I didn’t know the bitch was on welfare. I was paying her cash like a fucking idiot. They were taking my money, but they were also getting money from the state, double-dipping and shit.

 

JM: Do you ever get angry?

All the time.

 

JM: At who, and at what?

 

Everything. My life sucks. But you have to cope with it.

 

JM: What’s the biggest problems you’ve had to overcome?

 

Financial, I’d say. I ended up getting into heroin, Jay. I got all fucked-up on it. I had everything going on in my life good. I had a Mustang, nice job—flushed it all down the toilet because I got fucked-up on heroin. My kid’s mother introduced me to that shit, and she and I ended up getting real fucking sick from it.

 

JM: Can you describe how that started?

 

When I got out of jail, I ended up going back with her and she was a user. I never fucking touched the shit. Then one night I fucking tried it. I saw myself doing it every fucking other day. Then it was every fucking day. After that I ended up getting caught up in it. It just spiraled out of fucking control, fast. Fucking seriously. That was the ugliest shit I ever did, Jay. You always lying, fucking making up shit, making stories why you’re not at some function. You’re constantly full of shit.

 

JM: Did your family know about it?

 

Yeah, my mother, everybody knew. You’re fucking a mess, y’know what I’m saying?

 

JM: Much more than with any other drug?

 

Much more. Crack, I smoked that once in a great while, every now and then, I want to get the feeling. [laughs]

 

JM: Some other guys, when their kids were first born, straightened up. But back in ’91, you said, “No, I’m still a kid, really.”

 

I still feel like a kid.

 

JM: Back then you had trouble with your temper and you got violent with your girlfriends.

 

Yeah, I feel like fucking them up sometime, but I know the consequences now, and I don’t think I want to go through that jail shit. I’m fucking tired of it. But if it happens, it happens. I don’t give a fuck. I’ll explode in any given minute. I used to fucking slap the shit out of my chicks. Now I just walk away and get the fuck away.

 

JM: How did you learn to do that?

 

I dunno, I just did it.

 

JM: Did you have any help, like all the time you were in prison, counseling or anything like that?

 

Nothing. Nothing at all. I don’t know, I’m just sick of the consequences. You pay a fucking real fucking high price. Plus, people don’t like getting slapped around, and I wouldn’t want anybody slapping me around.

 

JM: Looking back, do you think the problems have been your problems?

 

I created my own fucking, shit, Jay, yes.

 

JM: All along the way.

 

All along the fucking way. Because I could have did things different.

 

JM: What would you do different?

 

Everything. I wouldn’t have kids. I would fucking go to school more. I’m living with my mother, I’m fucking forty years old, and I’m practically fucking homeless. I would do a lot of shit different. I wouldn’t do drugs. There’s a totally different ball game, there’s a life that you can have, a good fucking life. It’s what you make of it. But it still ain’t too late for me. I would fucking probably get into property, knowing what the fuck I know now.

 

JM: So did you guys have the same chances in life that other kids have?

 

No, probably not, because we were poor.

 

JM: And how were your chances different?

 

Well, money gets you the good schools. Money brings you power. If you’re poor, when you’re a kid—you were around when we were kids, you remember—it was crazy. If you’re a rich kid, then you have parents and shit to fall back on, or some sort of stability. There’s never been stability, that’s what I fucking see.

JM: Your girls are about the same age now as when I first met you.

 

My daughters, I tell them. Kerry fucking tried weed, thinks she can drink, and I scared the shit out of her. I says, “That’s not going to do you any good. It’s not going to solve your fucking problems, it’s just going to get bigger.” So I talk to them as a parent. But I’m open with them, like, “This destroyed me, and this fucking did your mother in, so don’t fucking go that road.” My daughter wants to be a nurse, and the other one wants to be a lawyer, so I hope something happens good, y’know? They’re good girls. I always encourage ’em: “Don’t worry about it, something good will happen. Just hang tough. You gotta hang tough. It’s all about fucking staying in the game. Something good’ll come.”

 

JM: Have there been times where you were having trouble seeing that yourself?

 

Every fucking day of my life.

 

JM: Is there anything anyone could have done back then, to make you see—

 

Yeah, maybe you could have took me on that canoeing trip, or to that fucking baseball game or something, like you did with my younger brother and those kids. [laughs] Jay, I love you, man. We fucking go way back, baby. I want a bonus for this, Jay, cuz I’m your most interesting subject, I know that. I fucking know I am. [laughs]

STONEY

Saved by the Drum

Stoney lives with his wife and younger brother on the top floor of a ramshackle triple-decker twenty miles from Clarendon Heights. It was wonderful to see Stoney out of prison: lean and tanned, his hair crew-cut and his torso covered with tattoos. Stoney was candid and thoughtful, and I learned for the first time how an eighth-grade prank affected his future. Stoney related how his music and his wife now keep him on an even keel, but I was acutely aware by the end of the interview how precarious his life is. Like many of the men in this study, Stoney had his driver’s license revoked because of failure to make child-support payments. Yet he drives forty miles most days to care for his mother-in-law, and a single traffic incident could put him back behind bars. Of more pressing concern to Stoney is the fate of his two sons, both of whom are latter-day Hallway Hangers back in the Clarendon Heights neighborhood. Countering the inertia of social reproduction is a personal priority for Stoney, but he’s philosophical about his boys’ prospects and his influence on their aspirations and attainment. Both of Stoney’s sons were arrested for attempted murder (they got off), and against the background of their chaotic young lives, Stoney seems settled indeed.

 

 

 

JM: Back in 1991 you were in Grassmoor [State Prison].

 

I was in for four years then, and I actually got out with no probation, no parole, no nothing. I was brand-new fresh, and I had a good girl. I had met Connie in between sentences and she stuck with me. We got a place. Still, I was back in a month. I just fell off the wagon and went kinda crazy.

 

JM: She must have been gutted. Armed robbery again?

 

A 7-Eleven. I was smoking coke and robbed the pizza shop that I was working in the night before. Took the money, smashed the register off the wall, told them that two black kids came in and took the money. The next night I ended up robbing a 7-Eleven. Just to get high. Crack—I got grabbed on that. I hit bottom so fast. I went from looking good, feeling good, pretty clean to worse than I was ever before.

 

JM: So how did that happen?

 

I dunno. I hate to blame other people, but there were other people involved. And then I started dragging other people down with me. I was just by myself for about a week before I went to jail. Just getting high, making pizza, getting paid daily. Connie was shunning me, didn’t want to be around me when I was like that, moved out of that house, went to her mother’s house for the last week I was out. Then she was left with the duty of going and emptying out the apartment. Pretty tough times.

They wanted to give me twenty to twenty-five. I ended up getting seven to ten and doing five years. Took parole for two years and I’ve been out ever since. I think it really had a lot to do with Connie. Having something to push towards. I asked her to marry me and she’s like, “I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you stay out of jail for a year before we even talk about it?” So that gave me some incentive. We got married in ’97, just passed our ninth anniversary. It’s a good marriage too. She kinda saved me. The one thing about her is her brutal honesty. Didn’t think I really ever wanted to get married, but when I met her it was, like, a huge step up and I was psyched. I just held on to it. [laughs] It’s like that one time you go out and grab the rim and you don’t want to let go. So it was like, I’m not letting go of this. I met her in 1990 when I was in prerelease making pizzas. Met her over one of the drivers’ house. She had a killer job: driving a train on the subway. Now she works for an electric company. She was a union electrician for a while, but now she’s not in the field; she’s an estimator and a project manager. She’s doing well.

 

JM: What jobs have you had?

 

I worked for my buddy’s pizza shop, I worked for his brother for a couple of years at a different pizza shop, I was a laborer at a welding shop. And there was the Harley thing: Soon as I got out I started working at Harley-Davidson in the city. I went to school in Florida, needed a certificate to get a job at the dealership. So we both went down there and that’s when Connie’s mom had her first stroke, so I came back but I was still able to sneak into Harley and get a job. So I worked there for four years, where I met a guy who was the old drum tech for Joey Kramer from Aerosmith, and he had a band and he wanted me to help him, so he taught me all the tricks to drum-teching.

 

JM: What’s that?

 

Drum tech: You set the kit up to the drummer’s specifics. And while he’s playing, you stand behind him and if anything falls over, any microphones you see moving or anything, you have to get right up there and take care of business. It’s intense, pretty cool. The drums and the music thing just took off big-time. I’ve met so many people, worked big shows, hung out with bands, playing in bands. I’m kinda old. I’ll be forty in July, but it’s kept me out of trouble. I love to see music and kids. Music is just so positive for people. It just makes you feel good. With music, anybody can really do it if you practice hard enough. I was practicing at one point six nights a week.

I do a lot of work now taking care of her mom, who had two strokes in the last eight years. And so where Connie makes really good money, it makes more sense for me not to work and me to distribute medication, take her to doctors’ appointments, do her food shopping, and stuff like that. Her mom’s from the Filipino islands. We do everything. Connie burnt herself out in the first four years and did so, so much, and she just can’t deal anymore. So now I do most of it so she doesn’t have to. Makes everything go smoother.

 

JM: Have you ever thought about kids with Connie?

 

No. We’re all set. She’s not able to have them. The boys lived with us a couple times while their mom was going through hard times. She was into the heroin pretty bad and she just called me out of the blue: “Hey, can you take the kids for a few months?” “Absolutely, bring them over.” Then one time they ended up staying for a year and a half.

 

JM: How old were they then?

 

Fourteen and twelve.

 

JM: That’s not an easy age. How did you cope with that?

 

I was cool with it. We let them stay in their school. So my wife would drop them off in the morning on the way to work, pick them up, and they come pick me up from work. It was really hard. My kids, in and out of trouble. Same story as me. Maybe worse, starting a bit younger. They both just beat an attempted-murder charge. And my Buddy’s back in jail now for fourteen months with probation violation. He’ll be twenty-one in November. My son Jamie has diabetes; he’s eighteen. They started like fourteen, fifteen, getting in fights, and it was the money thing with these kids. They see the money you can make selling drugs, and they’re right in the middle of all of it. They still hang right there by Clarendon Heights. Buddy, my oldest, he’s tough. Selling the drugs—that’s why he’s back in now.

 

JM: Having had your experiences, how did you raise them? How did you try to motivate them or encourage them? What sort of line did you take?

 

Connie was big on the sit-down dinner every night. Just consistency with dinner at five thirty every single night. It was tough because they only had one bedroom to share and they used to argue a lot. When it was time to bring the hammer down, she was the one. They would listen to her. They respect Connie a lot. Lead by example. Get up, go to work every day, and come home. Do my band thing. They were really happy about the band thing, even though they didn’t like the music very much. They’re into the hip-hop. We had family night with TV; we ended up picking South Park as a program that we could all watch. So it turned more into a friendship thing. . . .

 

JM: So talk to me about what the music has done for you.

 

I just ran with it. I just started playing the drums and just kept running with it. I’m getting better and better and better. And I’m the type of drummer that has to work for every little thing that I get. If I don’t work hard I’m not going to improve, whereas some people, it’s just God-given talent. Playing the drums—if you’re angry, that’s gonna take out a lotta frustrations. It’s not like I’m sitting down knitting quilts or something. You’re being aggressive. And it keeps me in shape, keeps me from getting fat. The wife loves to come to the shows, my mother comes to shows. It’s been a lotta fun. And that’s the attitude I try to keep. I’m not going to get discouraged if we don’t get radio play, don’t get a record deal, or don’t put together an East Coast tour. I try not to get discouraged, just keep moving ahead. I was talking to my buddy, the one that used to tech for Aerosmith, and he told me, “You’re going to get so many doors slammed in your face, man. Just keep going.” Because it is a business too. I mean, we do want to make money at it.

 

JM: It’s interesting your sons are into hip-hop. That wouldn’t have happened twenty years ago.

 

It’s changed now. The videos, the girls, the constant sex thing, the constant “get high, fuck this bitch, ‘F’ that.” The kids are feeding into that and they kind of like that. Now the kids that are into rock are your suburban kids, Columbine-type kids, long black trench coats. You go into any inner city, you’ll see every kid with his hat on sideways, his pants around his ass, two-hundred-twenty-five-dollar Nikes on, chain. Even my kids used to walk around with their whole getup worth around five hundred bucks. And they don’t have a job. They’re slinging drugs and hanging out on the corner and treating their girls like shit. I don’t think any of these kids know how to treat their girl these days. Like Connie’s brother, twenty-one years old, absolutely zero respect for women. The generations are getting worse and worse.

 

JM: So how’s that come about, do you reckon?

 

I dunno. Do you blame it on parenting? Growing up in a house where your dad’s in jail and your mother’s got sixteen boyfriends? Because then there’s the kids like Connie’s brother, where their mother did everything for them, baseball, hockey, soccer, he was in everything. Still a punk. So how do you really determine? My stepbrother and stepsister went through that tough time with my dad and his girlfriend. Both of them, in the years that they would have been in trouble, shined. He tried out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and my sister’s a beautiful girl, and they always got top grades in school. And then after that, then they got into their drug thing. But once they started getting into it, boom, your family traits kick in, your addictive personalities. I don’t know how much I really believe in any of that. Whether if I’m an alcoholic my kids are going to be alcoholics because of some kind of genetic passdown. Society too: I mean, Connie grew up right in the middle of so much stuff, she’s probably seen more people killed than I could ever see in the rest of my life. Great kid, though.

 

JM: Did you ever get angry that you grew up in a neighborhood where there really weren’t the opportunities that other kids on the other side of town enjoyed?

 

No. Because I got accepted to Barnes Academy, a prestigious school.

 

JM: Did ya? I didn’t know that.

 

And what did I do? Two weeks later I tripped a teacher at my old elementary school and broke his nose, so they took away my scholarship. I blew that one. Never went. Got my scholarship taken away for getting suspended for injuring the teacher. I was taking clarinet, and he was passing out papers, and I kicked the case out while he was going by my desk and he fell face-first. The school got in touch with Barnes, let them know exactly what happened, and they didn’t feel like I deserved it. Said that there was other kids that deserved it, that had the grades and were way less of a problem. I was a clown. My grades were always good. I was bored in school, though. I went to Dunning nine years: kindergarten through eight. It was right across the street from my house. I got suspended so many times, they used to just take me by my ear and bring me right to my mother, just walk me right over there. Wouldn’t even call her. Walk me right to the house, knock on the door, and she whipped my ass for a little bit. [laughs] Yeah, I blew that. So that’s my example.

 

JM: But yourself and some of the other guys that you were hanging around with, if they had been born two miles up the road . . .

 

Nah, I don’t believe that. I still believe that if you gave ten of the guys from my neighborhood the opportunity that ten of the guys from the rich neighborhood had, 50 percent of them will still drop the ball.

 

JM: Yeah. I agree with that. But it’s the other 50. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do different?

 

I would definitely have concentrated more on school and tried to run with what academic talent I did have back then because I’m sure the drugs destroyed a lot of that. I probably wouldn’t have had children so young. I did have my opportunities and I blew it. Could have someone been more disciplined with me? Probably not; my mother was pretty strict, she’s pretty free with her hands. If you had taken me out of Lincoln and put me in a suburban private school, maybe things would have been different. Maybe.

 

JM: I guess you’re having to go through the same thought process: Is there anything I can do with my lads to keep them from having to learn the hard way?

 

Yeah, I tried. I sat them down, Connie sat them down and talked. “I know, I know, Dad, I know.” I try to show them by what we do, with our actions, lead by example. You can’t preach at them anymore, we know that. I think everybody has to learn their own lessons in life, no matter how much you put it in their face. I mean, your grandfather’s been in jail, your father’s been in jail, your cousin’s in jail, brother’s in jail—how could you not fucking know in your head that that’s the wrong path to go? But still you take that path.

 

JM: Did you ever have a teacher that took a particular interest in you?

 

Umm . . . no.

 

JM: Something happened when you went to high school.

 

Yeah, I went from a school right across the street with twenty kids in the class. If I didn’t show it would be obvious, it would be a problem. Whereas in high school: Cappello’s not here, Wright’s not here, this one’s not here—okay, on with the lesson. It didn’t really matter. They had too many kids to deal with.

 

JM: You had no sense like, “Oh, I might be screwing myself”?

 

I was afraid of my mother, that was about it: “What am I gonna do if my mother finds out?” And then it got to the point where I didn’t give a shit, especially once I started getting high and drinking and smoking and doing pills. And it just got to the point where nothing really mattered to me.

 

JM: How did your mom react to all that?

 

She got tired of smacking me around. So we got the old “get out of the house” thing; “maybe that will straighten him out.” She just got tired of it. Especially when she was going through the thing with my dad. It wasn’t like there was much time after what she went through with my father, then I started coming through my stage. “So, you’re just like your father,” blah blah blah. Sometimes saying mean things, being angry. And then when I found the beatings don’t hurt as much anymore, you put your arm up, she starts hurting her hand, she lays back, she’s not hitting you as much anymore. Finally she just gave up. You can’t keep on smacking around a sixteen-year-old kid. It’s way too late for that.

 

JM: I remember back then your aspiration was to have your own pizza shop, wasn’t it?

 

That went out the window after being in the business for a few more years. Number one: you hafta be there all the time, you can’t really trust anybody after I’ve seen what people do, what I’ve done to people. And just the public servant thing: I just can’t do that. If I have to say, “Can I help you?” to one more motherfucker, I can’t do it, dude. I’d rather make someone smile watching me play drums on stage then have to get them their slice of pizza. There’s no progress. Everything is the same every single day. You go in, you make your fifteen salads, you make the same food. It’s not like you’re building a house and each day it comes together a little bit more and then when you’re done you can go: Wow, nice job, y’know what I mean? Same shit every day. There’s no sense of accomplishment.

 

JM: What about the Brothers? They were into school, they graduated and thought that they would get good jobs.

 

Yeah, it doesn’t guarantee you it, though. Even your first four years of college doesn’t guarantee you shit. When I was nineteen, working at Carlucci’s and making a decent paycheck for a kid, I got a waitress that’s standing over there that just did six years in college but she’s making fucking twenty bucks less a week than I am. It’s like four years of college doesn’t get you shit anymore. There’s so many qualified people out there that’s got their shit on the ball, and the opportunities just aren’t there. There’s just not enough jobs to go around for all the people who have that drive. I feel bad for a lot of people who spend half their life in college and now they’re busing tables or waitressing or whatever, working in that job that I could get just as easily with absolutely no education.

 

JM: And you had a skill early on that you were good at: making pizza.

 

Yeah, making the pizza. Saved my ass. Whenever I needed a job I could get it. The education thing, though—it’s just like anything else: connections, who you know. You got an uncle that’s an executive at IBM, boom, you got the qualifications you need. You and fifteen other guys have the same qualifications, but you know him. So it’s kind of a luck-of-the-draw thing.

 

JM: Frankie had connections to construction and—

 

City connections. He puts a lotta time in that, though; he’s earned that. He stands out there in the rain with that sign when this one’s running, when that one’s running [for election]. He’ll go down, he’ll vote every time. I never voted in my entire life. Frankie’s not stupid. Everybody likes him because he’s a got a way about him.

 

JM: Frankie’s gone through AA. How did you moderate?

 

I just try not to mess with drugs. I don’t disassociate with people who do them. In the last band, a couple of guys, they’d do a line here and there. Didn’t even faze me. Did I have to walk out of the room? Sometimes I’d go smoke a cigarette. But I wasn’t, like, shaking, “Oh, my God, let me have some of that.” I can look at things now and say, “Okay, I can do this, I can do whatever I want, but I better be willing to pay the consequences of what I do.” I don’t do anything that’s going to put me in a situation. I mean, I try. I still drink my beer and smoke a little weed. But no pills, none of that stuff. I try not to be too stupid. Plus, Connie keeps me in line. That’s a lot to do with it. She keeps me in line. I know that I’m throwing a lot out the window. Do I want to throw away my marriage and someone I’ve been with for sixteen years over fucking getting high? That’s ridiculous. That’s insanity.

I think you got to hit your own personal bottom. I did a program, a Correctional Recovery Academy. They made you go to meetings all day long, to the gym, to walk and run classes, meditation classes. Did I dig it all? No, I hated it. Do I really think that’s what helped me? I don’t think so. I had just had enough, dude. I just wanted the outside more, couldn’t give them any more of my time.

We were in a meditation class, and it had to be forty of us sitting in a circle. And so there’s this lady sitting there who’s running the class, and she’s got no shoes on, and she’s rubbing her fingers in between her toes for the first fifteen minutes she’s talking to us. So then she proceeds to take a bowl of raisins and pass them around the class and tell us to put the raisins in our mouth, but don’t chew them, don’t swallow them, just feel the raisin. And so everybody else put them in. I’m not doing nothing. And she’s like, “Are you going to be a problem? Aren’t you going to put the raisin in your mouth?” I said, “Absolutely not. You just sat there and rubbed your feet for fifteen minutes, then passed these things out.” Everybody started spitting the raisins out. [laughs] So they pull me down. And so the cop’s like, “What happened?” On minimum security the cops tend to be pretty okay. “What happened? You’ve been doing so good.” I told him and he’s like, “Fuck that. I would have said the same thing.”

It’s funny. In there you tend to act like a clown to make time pass by. It was like a whole crew of people doing whatever they could to laugh. At the Correctional Recovery Academy I never was really too interested. Of course my ulterior motive was to get a parole. I earned tons of good time. But as time went on, I got more into it and I ended up being the MC at the ceremonies. When I first got out, I didn’t drink for almost two years.

They axed all those programs. They have truth in sentencing now. Just a straight seven to ten. You do seven and see the parole board, ten to wrap. It’s way harder. It’s strictly 100 percent punishment, no rehab whatsoever. The prison system—the flood is coming and the water is rising up and up and up, and they just keep trying to build the ceiling higher and higher. They’re not doing anything to contain the water. No education, no rehab, no programs anymore in this state.

 

JM: Has it been important to you, not being back in the old neighborhood?

 

From first coming out of jail and not going back, probably the best move I’ve ever made in my life. Seems like the older crowd has done worse than us, and they’re still all out there. And now you have this next generation coming up that are just totally fucking outta control. You gotta be careful with these kids these days; they’ll cut your head off in a heartbeat. It’s really vicious. It’s worse now than it ever was.

 

JM: Everybody had their drug of choice back then.

 

Oh, yeah. I was one of the only ones that was into the downs back then.

 

JM: So how did that trajectory go? What did you first get into, and how did things progress?

 

Basically do everything and pick which one you like the best: what’s cheaper, what’s the best high for the money. How high can I get with this ten dollars? I can get five Valiums or I can get two Valiums and a six-pack. I never really liked uppers too much because I’m already hyper, so any upper just makes me shake and stuff. Yeah, it was definitely downs. Which made a depressing dude more depressing. Then you start feeling sorry for yourself, because those things bring out the retardedness in you. Start feeling bad, just doing stupid stuff, get yourself in trouble on purpose, just to get out of the situation you’re in because you think that’s the only way out.

 

JM: I remember when we talked the last time, in ’91, you were getting that used to prison. There’s a kind of security in that. Because I remember you were in for silly stuff. It was almost as though you were—

 

Getting in trouble on purpose? Yeah, absolutely. I would definitely admit to that. Now there’s the thing hanging over me: If I commit another felony, even if it’s fifteen years from now, I could be brought up on habitual offender. I could still end up doing the rest of my life in prison.

The worst thing I probably do right now is drive that car with no license, which I’ve been doing for a while now. But it’s just out of my range to get it back. I drive Connie to work every day to Denton [thirty miles] because I need the car to take care of her mom.

JM: Why did you lose your license?

 

They took it for child support because all the time I was in jail my bill was pretty huge. And I can’t get that cut down at all. When you go to jail you’re supposed to get the court to stop the payments for the time that you’re in there. And all that would take is a piece of paper in the administrative building: “Anybody with child-support issues see a caseworker.” But hell, no. You know how many fucking trips they’re going to have to make to the courthouse if they put that sign up? How much that’s going to cost them? So they don’t tell anybody. Now you can’t do anything about it because you didn’t go into court and have the payment stopped. So here I am in the custody of the state, and now the state’s trying to hit me for child support while I’m sitting in a jail cell.

 

JM: So while you’re in prison, this bill’s racking up.

 

Racking up! It’s up around $90,000 now. And it’s only like $13,000 in back support. All the rest is interest and penalties. And they send you a bill like a phone bill, “Please pay in full.” Fucking $91,800 and something. Are you shitting me? So they suspended my license. And then there’s the thing of them categorizing you as a deadbeat dad. Officially, I’m a scumbag. For the last year and a half I had legal custody of Jamie, so all that money should be wiped out. What about the year and a half they stayed with Connie and I? That should be wiped out. But there’s a state law that prohibits any judge from retroactively reversing a child-support order. You cannot reverse that order. It had to be stopped while I was in jail. Now it’s too late.

 

JM: No one’s ever said this is crazy? They won’t look back and waive that?

 

We tried; they gave us a stack of papers this thick. “Fill these out and come back.” Well, can you help me? “No.” They discourage you. That’s how screwed-up this state is with their whole child-support thing.

 

JM: That’s a lot hanging over your head, because it’s not going to go away. Presumably you can’t work legally . . .

 

No. The last ten years, they’ve been . . . boring because it’s a lot of sitting at home, watching TV. I do practice three nights a week. The way I’m running with the band thing is pretty important to me. I’ve finally progressed in something and not just did okay at it. I’m getting better as time goes on. I don’t feel like I’m wasting time. I’ve met a lot of good people and it keeps me busy. I guess you have to excel at something to really give you that confidence. I think I’ve learned to think about other people more. I’m really naturally a selfish person.

JM: Most of us are. [laughs]

 

Like the stuff I do for Connie’s mother, ten years ago could I have done that? Absolutely not. I would’ve been too worried about myself, instead of, “How can I make this work for everybody?” That comes with age.

If everything didn’t happen the way it did and play out the way it did, then I wouldn’t be who I am today. Which isn’t a spectacular citizen or anything. But I’m okay. I’m doing good. I got a beautiful wife. I’m content, dude. I don’t own my own house, not much of an apartment here; there’s no insulation, so it’s hell in the winter, unbelievably cold. We don’t make a lot of money. But I have my necessities, and I could live like this forever. I don’t need that big American Dream. It’d be nice to get it, but does it really matter to me? Naw. It really doesn’t. But, hey, we got cable, we got a computer, we got VCR, DVD players, CD players, Bose speakers, nice car outside. After living in a cement block for so many years, I can live just about anywhere. I can live in a car if I had to. It wouldn’t be very enjoyable, but I’d survive.

CHRIS

Back Down at the Bottom

I suspected that Chris would be back in prison, and word on the street suggested the same. But he proved difficult to locate. Eventually, an old friend of mine who worked at the county jail made some telephone calls and discovered that a “dope sick” Chris had been transferred to a jail across the state. I phoned the jail, but they refused to confirm that Chris was there. Even if he was, to arrange a visit I would need to be on his visitors’ list. How long does that take? “Maybe a month.” I wrote to Chris at the jail but the letter was returned with a big red stamp—RETURN TO SENDER: ID# AND UNIT REQUIRED. Frustrated, I phoned the chaplain and introduced myself as the Reverend Jay MacLeod. The chaplain said a pastoral visit could be arranged. Could I fax him a copy of my ordination certificate? The certificate was sitting in the bottom drawer of my desk on another continent. Eventually, I phoned my bishop in England, his secretary phoned the chaplain, and a pastoral visit with Chris was arranged. I put on my clergy shirt and drove fifty miles to the rural county jail. Fifteen minutes after arriving, I had bypassed the visitors’ waiting room, negotiated the front desk and the security routines, and was ensconced in a lawyer’s cubicle on the inside. I barely recognized Chris when he arrived in the hall with two other inmates to see their lawyers. His hair was long and permed, his face angular but not hollowed, and his frame larger and stronger than I remembered. For his part, Chris was surprised to walk in and find a priest rather than a public defender, and it took him a few moments to figure out who I was. He was happy to hear about the book and to talk, although he occasionally broke down in distress. After twenty minutes or so, we were displaced by a lawyer and another inmate, so Chris and I continued our conversation at the back of the chapel. At the end I was more pastor than researcher and fighting back tears myself.

 

 

 

CHRIS: I remember when you came to see me in Broadbottom. That musta been ’91. I was being held for three armed robberies. I ended up gettin’ five to eight for each, running concurrently. I’ve been inside for almost all the fifteen years since then. Another armed robbery and a lotta little shit. Christ, you should see my record. About thirty offenses. Some of it is little stuff. Like I’m being held now for possession of a hypodermic needle and a crack pipe. That’s the charge: having paraphernalia. Cop picked me up for that. Same cop had searched me many times and found stuff, but this time he took me down to the station. Actually saved my life. There was a group of us in the little park by State Street, near Pilgrim House and this other shelter. This cop came across nearly every day. Anyway, this time he takes the needle and pipe off me, looks at me, and shakes his head. “Y’know what? I’m gonna give you a little holiday. You look like you need a rest.” Took me down to the station. They held me in Carlisle [state prison], then shipped me way the hell down here because there was room. I hate these private facilities. The food is no worse than other places but you only get one helping. One scoop of potatoes, one ladle of gravy, half pint of milk for breakfast. They gotta make money. No gym, no weight room, no TV, nothing. I’m in here with guys on federal charges, guys from immigration, state, county. Just waste away in here together. No way to stay in shape. They only got a bar at the end of the block to do pull-ups. I look scrawny now compared to a few years ago. I was beefed up when you saw me last, yeah? I’ve hardly been out since then. Been locked up eleven, twelve, thirteen times. Same old shit. Just hanging on, drinking, getting high: coke, crack, heroin. Sleeping in shelters, in the park, outside churches. People come by with blankets but it gets cold out there. I spent a week in the hospital because I couldn’t walk—frostbite. Now, that was a holiday. The nurses were nice, tried to get me in different programs. Once I could walk I checked myself out. I regretted that. Once you’ve had frostbite it gets you all the time. I tried to check in to another hospital. And another. They wouldn’t take me. Wouldn’t have me. I had no way to pay.

This charge now, paraphernalia. I didn’t tell my mom or my sisters. I couldn’t admit to them that I was using again. I told them I got in a fight, that I’m in for assault and battery. I doubt they’re fooled, though. They know what time it is. Only it’s much worse this time because I’m a father now. [lowers his head into his hands and tries to collect himself]

There was a stretch when I was doing good. I was out for eighteen months over two Christmases. I’d been through so many programs that no one would take me. I kept applying for all these programs when I was in prerelease. Finally, this Covenant House gave me a break. It was a Christian program, lots of ministers, and I got on real good with one of the counselors. This guy took a real interest in me. So I stuck with it, graduated after six months. With my record it’s almost impossible to get a job. Everyone wants a CHR, and even when I level with them, admit I’m an ex-con, explain my situation, tell them I’m in a program, offer to give references, they all say, “Okay, very good; listen, we’ll call you.” How many times have I heard that? Well, this mobile phone company did call back. I was at Covenant House, and they gave me a chance at their little outlet in the Grassmoor Mall. You know what I’m like, Jay. I’m good with people and I’m good with my mouth. And I’ve gotten better at listening. I’ve actually got some gifts when it comes to people skills. It shows in here. I get on with the young guys, the old guys, the white guys, the black guys, the Spanish guys. They’ll talk to me. I ain’t no counselor but these guys will open up to me. I’ve got this gift. I’m good with people. Anyway, it turns out that I make a pretty good salesman. I sold a helluva lot of mobile phones. One November I had the company’s best sales figures in the state. I was doing real good. Sold 144 phones with a fifty-buck commission on each on top of my wage. Do you know what it was like knocking on my mother’s door and offering her a hundred dollars? All those times I’d come round begging or even stealing from her. Stopping by my sister’s place and giving her fifty bucks? Not that they’d take the money. But it was a good feeling being able to offer. Going to see my baby and bringing the box of Pampers and bringing a gift for her mom. I was doing good. Word got round the mall about my sales figures. Cingular ended up asking me to manage a tiny unit they opened in the mall. I had some trouble with staff who were fucking up. So I ended up doing it all myself. The shop was open seven a.m. to ten p.m. seven days a week. I’m on the computer dealing with stock and inventory, I’m dealing with customers, dealing with deliveries. It just got to be too much. I was working solo seven days a week, fifteen hours a day. I was bone-tired but it was easier to keep it simple rather than supervise others. But then it got on top of me, and the stress built up. One day this girl Angela turned up, one of my old running buddies. She was fresh out of jail with two thousand dollars in her pocket. She gave me a thousand, and we just took off. Bought a ’95 Lexus, looked brand-new. We cruised around, stayed in hotels, living it up. We were living out of the trunk of the car. My whole life was in there. Then I got pulled over for running a yellow light. She was on parole, so she tried to give a false name, but the car was registered in her name and the cop figured that out, so, bang, she was hauled back inside. I got out the next day. They offered me twenty-three hours of community service, so I said, “Fine.” I still had some money, so I headed right back into the city and blew it, getting high with the old crowd. Same old crowd. It was a pretty tight downward spiral ’til I ended up in here.

 

JM: What tends to trigger your downward spirals? What makes you fall off the wagon?

 

I’m weak. It can be a simple thing, a little setback, and I end up drinking. Once I start drinking, then I want to get high: coke, heroin, whatever. Impatience too. I can’t seem to stick with something for long enough. And like I said, I have trouble recovering from setbacks. I don’t bounce back the way I should. So I have a few beers, and one thing leads to another and I end up in here.

I fall off the wagon in all sorts of ways. I’ve been to AA and NA, I’ve tried to look at my weaknesses, I’ve tried to avoid getting in situations that will be difficult for me. But I end up back down at the bottom, and it’s a steep slide. It’s my own fault, I know. I can’t blame anyone but myself. You remember when I was a kid I was sick a lot, had these throat problems? A few years ago I finally had my tonsils out. Of course I didn’t tell the doctor I was an addict, a recovering addict. He gave me OxyContin, gave me two bottles, and of course I ended up drinking it. Was s’posed to take a spoonful a day and just drank the stuff. Told the doctor that I kicked the bottle over and spilled it by accident. He prescribed another couple of bottles and that was it, I was hooked again. When I couldn’t get hold of OxyContin I went back to the heroin and cocaine.

JM: Tell me about your daughter and her mom.

 

I met Colleen in one of the programs. I look like shit now, with this front tooth missing, but I’m not a bad-looking guy when I have my teeth in. [takes a retainer out of his mouth, revealing that he has only two top teeth] So when I’m out on parole and in these different programs, they’re all co-ed, and I can sense the girls saying, “Okay, who’s this new guy?” There’s quite a few of them have fallen for me. This time it worked the other way. I fell in love with her. But I fucked up, ended up dragging her down with me. She got pregnant and I was still using. She said not to bring it in the apartment. She was five months pregnant and was completely clean. One night I came home and she was high. The baby had been lying on her right side on this nerve, and Colleen was in a lot of pain and ended up taking some stuff that I’d left behind. That was it, she was hooked again. Hazel was born about two weeks later. The drugs induced the labor after only five and a half months. She was tiny, smaller than my palm, less than four pounds. That was so hard to take, seeing this little tiny, totally innocent girl, hooked up to all these machines, all these wires going into her. She was born an addict. [stops talking to collect himself] She’s okay now. Colleen went straight into another program. She had to or social services would’ve taken the baby from her. It was really hard because they would only let me visit once a month. In this program they don’t want the women to have contact with men, they minimize the contact, so I only saw Colleen and Hazel once a month. That was doing my head in. I found that really hard to take. I ended up going off the deep end again. Just fucked up once again. I can’t blame anyone but myself.

You don’t have any idea how much it hurts when I’m walking through the park and there’s a mom and dad pushing their baby on the swing set. I just have to stop and fight back the tears. I just want to cry. Sometimes I do. I want to be a good dad so bad. More than anything. I just don’t know if I can. I’ve been on the inside so much and I’ve been in so long, it’s so hard when I’m out. I know that sounds weird, but it’s hard. I believe in my heart that Colleen, because she does love me, I believe deep down that she’ll have me back. I don’t know that she will but I believe that she will. I’ll have to stay clean, of course, but now I’ve got a big incentive to put away the drink and drugs for good. Two big incentives: Colleen and Hazel. But hell, I might not get the chance. She may not take me back. I don’t know what I’d do then. Do you think she’ll have me back? What do you think, Jay?

 

JM: I think you better prepare yourself emotionally for Colleen to want to keep her distance. It’s hard for two recovering addicts to be together, and she’ll be thinking about what’s best for the baby. I dunno. Maybe you could prove that you’re serious about changing this time by staying clean for six months or something and then trying to get back together. You’d have to stay faithful, though. Does she know about this other woman, y’know, the one on the Lexus spree?

Yeah, she knows about that. But she also knows how much I care for her and Hazel.

 

JM: Any chance of treatment in here?

 

Naw. All that stuff has gone by the wayside. Money, my man. The regime in this state has changed big-time since I saw you last. This place here, they got a chain gang, just like in those old films. Plus, I don’t make it easy on myself. I won’t back down to a cop. I’m always getting into beefs with the cops in here, the screws. They put me in the hole but I’ve done enough hard time that it don’t bother me that much anymore. Fuck ’em.

 

JM: Is there racial tension in here?

 

Yeah, out here in the boondocks most of the cops are white. Things heat up between us and them, and between black guys, white guys, Spanish guys. It gets rough. They useta take some care about who they put together in cells. They put any two in a cell, not like two black guys together. Now they don’t care. It’s black with the white, with the Spanish, whoever: First come, they’re in the empty cell, that’s the way it goes. It’s better than Butler, though. I had to share a cell with two guys there. Cells built for one with three guys living in it. It’s wild. They took out the desk where you write your letters and put in another bed. You gotta sleep one way or you keep getting your head kicked all night. Fucking joke. But you get a television in your cell there to compensate.

I’ve had enough of this, I can tell you. Truthfully. I’m almost forty years old, and I don’t want to come back in here. If I do something I’m going away for a long, long time. Another armed robbery and it’s thirty to forty years. I mean, I’m stupid, but I’m not stupid.

In a way I’ve been luckier than many. Lotta guys are dead. I’m lucky I don’t have AIDS. The last test I had was eight months ago, but you never know, you never know. When I’m out there using, I’m not too cautious. Not too cautious with needles.

 

JM: Hazel is your only child?

 

Yup.

 

JM: So you’ve been responsible sexually, then.

 

[laughs] Yeah, I have. It’s called jail, Jay! That’s my contraceptive of choice. I’ve been inside, man. I’ve been locked up most of the fucking time. Shit.

You’ve seen the other guys? They’re not doing too great either, huh? I’m not the only one who’s fucked-up. Frankie’s doing okay but the other guys—Steve, Shorty, Stoney—I guess they’re doing better than me, I hope they are anyway, but they’ve screwed up too.

 

JM: I’m going down to the South to see Slick. I think he’s got his own roofing company.

 

Damn! You’re gonna see Slick? He’s on the run, right? I thought he was on the run. I hope he has done good. Slick always had that in him. I’m glad he’s got out. Frankie—his faith helps him. We useta joke about it: Here comes the preacher man. I ain’t laughing now. In the recovery programs they talk about how you can’t do it alone. The first step is to understand that there’s a power greater than yourself. I believe in God, and I think he’s going to help me get through, I hope so. I hope he is. I hope there’s more to life than this. At Covenant House I used to read my Bible. I only applied to that program because I’d been rejected by all the others. But when I was there it began to mean something to me. I try to read the Bible but it’s easy to get bogged down.

 

JM: Try the Psalms. They’re songs of praise but also of protest and pain. The author is just honest before God. When you talked to me back in ’91, I thought of the Psalms. You were really despondent and some of the things you were saying are echoed in the Psalms.

 

Have the Psalms helped you?

 

JM: Yeah, very much. They taught me that God doesn’t want me to pretend to be humble and thankful and holy if I’m actually fed up to the back teeth and need to shake my fist and shout at God in anger. The Psalms make me more honest with myself. And that’s not easy to do.

 

You’re tellin’ me. So how does that work for you?

 

JM: If we know in our gut that God is merciful, that he accepts me just as I am, the real me, the me that’s selfish and impatient and full of pride and vanity and ambition, then I don’t need to deceive myself. I can face up to the real me. I can put away all the masks that I put on for other people. I can begin to deal with my sin, with my faults and failings.

 

In my case that’s a lotta shit to deal with. [laughs] Fuck.

 

JM: I reckon God can deal with it. When Jesus was arrested and whipped and mocked and spat on, he didn’t say, “Fuck you.” He said, “I forgive you.” The forgiveness we’re talking about didn’t come cheap: God suffering on the cross, reaching out to forgive you and also to give you strength.

It’s hard, though. When you fuck up, you’re not just screwing yourself. I see that now. I’m not just letting myself down. I’m letting down my daughter, my girlfriend, my mother, my sisters, all of ’em. My kid sister Kerry, she’s been incredible. She was going to visit Hazel regularly. Kerry has been big, really big. And that counselor I was tellin’ you about? That guy really was in my corner. I know now, when you get those breaks, you gotta take them. These days it’s hard to catch a break if you’re coming out of jail. Ain’t many employers gonna take a risk on me. The phone guys cut me some slack but there ain’t that many people out there these days who are going to do that for you. I’ve still got hopes for the future but they’re pretty thin.

SLICK

Head Up High

When Steve and I finished our interview and I was saying goodbye to his mother, Steve handed me a phone. It was Slick in the South. “Why don’t you come down?” Slick asked. “I’ll take you fishing.” A week later, there I was on Slick’s twenty-four-foot boat, the Gulf of Mexico stretching out before us under a cloudless sky. Fifteen years earlier I’d gone to interview Slick in his cramped, chaotic apartment and he’d wondered how he could scrape together enough money for his son’s christening. The contrast was surreal. We didn’t catch many fish but the interview was productive. Slick finds success bittersweet. This is, after all, the man who’d favorably contrasted Clarendon Heights with a Sun Belt city twenty-three years earlier: “You cannot find better friends because everybody’s in the same boat” (see page 36). Back on land, we stopped off at a construction site. This turned out to be Slick’s new home—five thousand square feet complete with split staircase, “cathedral” living room, game room, and a walk-in closet bigger than my son’s bedroom. I joined Slick’s family for a late-evening meal at an Outback Steakhouse and spent the night at their “old house.” With his strong, wiry frame and tanned, weather-beaten face, Slick carried himself with an air of authority in public but at home relaxed into easy banter with his kids. I was first up the next morning, but the household was far from quiet: Three television sets were blaring, Slick was crashed out on a couch in the living room, and the girls were sleeping in yesterday’s clothes on a sheetless bed. It felt like a slice of Clarendon Heights in the suburban South. To be fair, the household was disrupted both by my presence and by packing for the move to the new home, and maybe my unease betrays my own middle-class sensibilities. In any case, an hour later the three children lined up at the kitchen sink to brush their teeth under parental scrutiny before heading off to school. Slick caught my eye and his grin said it all: Here is one project kid who has made it on his own terms.

 

 

 

JM: 1991: You were living on the other side of town.

 

I had two sons at the time, Brad and Tyler. Brad, I was not with his mother any longer, and Tyler was a newborn. And my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, my mother’s mother. She’s the one that I always cared about the most. Things were what they were in the city, except there was an escalation of trouble: not so much doing drugs but selling them and dealing with the element that you’re selling to, not the most upscale of customers. [laughs] I was still doin’ the roofing gig, but we were in the process of moving [to a working-class suburb]. Prior to that, my brother and I went to pick up some money for a guy, my brother ends up stabbing this guy, almost killed him. Both of us got arrested for attempted murder. This was not a planned thing. This was something he just did, without any knowledge. That caused a lotta friction because, number one—you don’t do something like that without telling somebody, and number two—the guy never did anything wrong to anybody to deserve that. So I’m waiting for Steve to do the right thing, which is tell the police that he had did it because there’s no sense in someone that didn’t have nothing to do with this going to prison. I didn’t want to go back to prison because, what the fuck, I had already done a year. Anyways, waiting for Steve to do the right thing. That never materialized, so that entire year, ’91 to ’92, was real stressful.

 

JM: They charged you both?

 

Charged us both with attempted murder. It went all the way to trial. What happened was, roughly, when we went to trial, the victim got up and said, “Slick had absolutely nothing to do with this.” That’s the only reason I didn’t end up going to prison for it, would’ve ended up doing about seven years in jail. Like Steve did. I ended up getting a three- to five-year suspended sentence for doing nothing.

That’s when I realized that if I continued to stay, I’m only gonna continue to get in more trouble. Like I said, the violence, it didn’t seem like it was decreasing, it was increasing. In severity.

 

JM: What was causing that, that increase?

 

You’re not a young kid no more. Now you’re an adult, doing adult things. I was never really much into guns, but guns were there, drugs were there, more serious consequences for what you’re doing. I was getting into more and more fights. Two guys pulled knives on me in bars. I kicked the shit out of both of them. I mean, I beat them severely, one of them to within a few inches of his life.

 

JM: So what was going on with that? Why was this happening?

 

There was always a good reason at the time. [laughs] Seriously, I was always provoked. It wasn’t always strictly self-defense, but it wasn’t a situation you could walk away from and hold your head up high. I felt like I had to fight. Once I was just going to pick up Denise and my mother-in-law, for chrissakes. It was like two in the morning and I walk up and this guy says, “Is this him?” And he bust a bottle in my face. See this scar over my eye? That’s where he hit me. We fought for like a full fucking hour, right in the street; it took the fucking cop ages to come. I was on my knees but the other guy was laid out flat. The cops said, “What happened here, Slick?” I says, “I think he fell over, and if you’ll excuse me, it’s late and I need to get my mother-in-law home.” Denise and her mom got pretty good at applying the old butterfly stitches.

I had a guy come up wanting to stab me. He didn’t do too well. I beat the shit out of that guy. And I said, “Fuck it, I’ll tell you what, I’m ready, I’m getting out; my next chance, I’m outta here.”

When I moved, I got a job at a roofing company. My grandmother had just passed away. The roofing company says, “Listen, we gotta go down south; this is right after Hurricane Andrew. We’re going down to the Sun Belt, you wanna go?” I said, “Well shit, it’s already November, and I know everybody’s gonna get laid off up here.” I said, “Yeah.” So I told my wife, “I’m going down south to work.” When I was down there, that’s when I made the decision. I called her up and I says, “Listen, when I come back up for my sister’s wedding, have the house packed. We’re moving.” That’s what I did. Moved.

 

JM: Was it a tough decision or was it easy?

 

It was an easy decision to make; it was a tough decision to stay away, from going back. It wasn’t easy, because down here you don’t know anybody, you’re leaving your entire family, you’re leaving the people that you grew up with, you’re not so much of a big fish anymore. A lot of adjustments.

I always had the belief, though, when I was a kid, and I think I got this from my grandmother, that if you work hard at something, good things will happen outta it. Good things will transpire for you. And I never lost that, even though when I was in the projects, I swayed from it a lot, but it always was something that stuck in my head. Always.

Once we got down here it was a hard adjustment. You gotta remember, you’re a person from an area that requires you to be on the offensive a lot, and then when you’re down here with normal people it’s almost like you’re an animal out of the cage. It’s a hard adjustment to make. It’s not easy. I couldn’t believe that people would wave “hi” to ya, that don’t even know ya. “Hey, how you doing?” I thought they were giving me the finger when I first got down here. I turned my car around, “What? Oh, no, just waving, Hi.” [laughs] I couldn’t believe how nice people treat you. It’s not that they’re trying to suck you into something, they’re just genuinely being nice.

It was a really, really big adjustment. Shit, I rented my first house down here, right when I got here, and I was shocked that you can rent such a nice house; it had bedrooms and a living room and a dining room and all this shit, had a pool. It was a big swing of things for me.

When I first came down, you miss the action of being back home because everything can change in a second. Everything is so quick-paced.

When you sit back and you’ve got time to think, you look back on what you did when you were a kid, going from adolescence into a young man, and you think, I shouldn’ta let my surroundings interfere with my goals. I shoulda used my head more than for just trying to be a tough guy. I should’ve went against that, been strong enough to say, “No, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna turn around this way, instead of getting in so much trouble.” Thirty-two years of your life, you’re that person. It’s difficult.

I’ve made a lot of really, really great, great friends down here and everything. They ask about your background; I explain to them, I make no apologies for my background, for anything that I’ve done. I’ve done things that I’m not proud of. But I’m definitely not ashamed. I never did anything wrong to kids. I never violated women in any way. I did what I did, and whatever crimes I committed, I paid for one way or the other. I’m forty years old now, and I’m just happy that I left there and I’m alive. Because when I was a kid, I didn’t think I’d live past thirty. That’s a fact.

 

JM: Why was that back then, even for someone like yourself?

 

Because of the way that we lived. You lived dangerously, the element of people you’re around, you being part of it, you’re into full survival mode no matter what you’re doing. Whatever you hafta do, you’ll do. And whether it means hurting someone physically, to the point where it’s either you die or they die, your mind is to not be the one that’s dead.

I tried not to let those people influence what I did, ever. That’s why I spent so much time trying to get out of there, by going in the marines, moving down here. I always knew I didn’t want to stay there. It was just a matter of “how the hell am I going to get out of here?”

 

JM: How did your family react to the news when you said, “Get the house packed, we’re coming down here”?

 

My son was only fourteen months old, so he didn’t have really much to say about it at all. [laughs] My wife didn’t wanna leave but she knew that in order for us to be a family and to have the right things for him and whatever other kids we had, we had to leave. We just had to. We weren’t in trouble with the law at that time. It was just you’re still right in that environment, and we both knew that we just had to get the hell away from it. Or, as your research is showing you, prospects wouldn’t have been looking good. I know for a fact that I probably would be either dead or in jail if I had stayed.

The kids in this area have all these great advantages, they’re living at the Gulf of Mexico, they’re in a suburban setting, most of them in two-parent households, and you see the kids screwing up, their versions. They get into burglary, robbery, drugs, and I just don’t understand why they would take that avenue when there’s no need for it here. This is suburbia. Everybody’s in a pretty nice place; even the shitholes are nice. [laughs] It’s not easy to be able to tell these kids something. I’m involved with the football and cheerleaders association, we got like 250 young people involved. I’m actually the chairman, and I try to tell the kids but it’s hard because they don’t know that part of me.

 

JM: Comparing what it’s like here for kids growing up and what it was like back in Clarendon Heights, what are the factors that—

 

Factors why we did what we did? The single biggest factor, in my opinion, honestly? Parental figures in the household. Almost everybody that I hung around with, probably 90 percent of us came from single-parent households. And that’s basically fathers not accepting responsibility, mothers settling to put a roof over the kids’ heads, settling for the projects. Nobody when they move to the projects thinks it’s going to be a lifetime thing. They all say, “Yeah, we’re only gonna be here a year, we’re gonna be here six months until we get straightened out,” and blah, blah, blah. And then they fall into a rut. There’s nobody to guide anybody. It’s basically a guideless place. When I’m talking to my son, I find myself thinking, “I wish when I was fourteen years old somebody took the time to talk to me; maybe I wouldn’t have chosen this path to go down.” That’s the single biggest thing.

The second biggest thing is, as you get older in that environment and the repercussions from your choices become stronger, penalties become more severe, such as going to prison. At some point you need to take a look at yourself in the mirror and say, “What do I actually want to do? I’ve already lost my entire youth to this shit. What type of person am I going to be when I’m forty years old? Do I want to continue this?” And in order to not continue it, they need to get out of it, and a lot of them don’t want to get out of it. Even though they’re very tough guys, mentally strong, they’re really not because they’re staying there. Everybody has a choice. Everybody can get a hundred dollars, get on a fucking bus, get the hell out of there, know what I’m saying?

If you’re away from there, then that’s half the battle. Next thing is to stay away from there. When you’re trying to be a regular citizen and you can’t make your electric bill, you can’t make your water bill or whatever, that don’t mean you run back home. You gotta deal with it, boom, take the pain. It’s real tough; it’s tougher being a regular person, paying your bills, feeding your kids, accepting responsibilities, getting up at five in the morning, going to work every day, climbing these roofs, staying out in this hot sun, than it is to be a fuckup. Anybody can go out there and sell drugs. That’s the easy part. Hard part is making your bills, making sure your kids eat. That is no joke. It’s still no joke. Got to accept responsibilities, and that will break the cycle of it all.

 

JM: What about addiction?

 

I wasn’t addicted to anything. I never let drugs really take control of me. [a long pause] Well, no, it was a problem because, I look back on it, all the trouble I got into, it started with drinking. When I got into a lotta trouble, it’s because I was out drinking. But you’re drinking down there to forget things, to get away from reality. Drinking or drugging. But like I said, you better know when the party is fucking over. You gotta take stock in yourself and say, “I’m thirty-five years old; I’m living with my mother. Maybe I’m doing something wrong here.” I mean, you gotta be honest with yourself.

But when you’re in that environment, there is no relaxing. Your relaxation is getting beer, getting drugs—that’s the relaxing part. Like I said, you’re on the offensive all the time. You’re not on the defensive. Offensive front all the time, you never know what’s coming at you at any point during the day or night. That’s just a fact. You can’t just say, “Hey, fuck it. I’m going down to the river to kick back in the sun.” You don’t appreciate those things. You don’t appreciate the little things like that. You don’t know you can take the bus from the projects all the way out to the beach for a dollar.

Getting high was our recreation. We were fourteen-year-old kids living as adults. None of us had to be home at a certain time, predominantly. Some of us were questioned when we got home, yeah. We didn’t have to answer to anybody. There was no keeper.

 

JM: What about your mom?

 

She tried until I was like fourteen years old. Like I said, a one-parent household—how much authority do you think a woman who is five foot three inches high has over a boy, a guy, a young guy that wants to do what he wants to do? Absolutely none. There’s nobody to tell you, “Hey, you can’t stay out until one o’clock in the morning at fourteen years old.”

 

JM: There was no teacher that took an interest in you?

 

Not that I’m aware of. If they took an interest, they didn’t tell me much about it. Prior to the projects I was in a school called City Latin, which is one of the premier schools in the country. To get in there, you enter into a test program. Well, I got into that school, did a year in that school, and my mother decided to move to the projects [in a neighboring city]. I used to get up at five thirty in the morning, get myself dressed, feed myself breakfast, get on the bus all the way to City Latin, get to school by seven thirty, come back home. Until they noticed that I was starting to get tired. “What’s the matter?” I said, “Well, where I moved—” They said, “Where’d you move to?” When I told them, they said, “We have to charge you an admission because you’re out of the area.” Obviously, my mother couldn’t afford it, it was a heavy number back then, maybe two thousand dollars. Anyway, she couldn’t afford it, so I went from there to Lincoln High, and that’s when my change came about, when I was thirteen years old.

When I went to the projects, then Lincoln High, I was still highly intelligent, but no big brothers, no father figure, no uncles, no nothing in that project. I was a young, skinny, smart kid in the projects; I wasn’t getting too much respect, y’know what I’m sayin’? [chuckles] I had to make a big decision, because I had younger brothers and sisters: “Am I gonna get my ass kicked every day,” which is what was happening, or was I gonna do what I gotta do, so that way this won’t happen to them? And that’s what I chose to do.

 

JM: Why did your mom feel the need to move?

I don’t know why; you’ll have to ask her that. Never got a good answer. Alls I was told was, “Unpack those boxes; we’re only going to be here for about six months to a year. Living close to your grandmother, so we can help her out.”

 

JM: There was no man in the house even if it wasn’t your dad?

 

At that time my mother was going out, bringing home strange guys. It was a terrible existence.

 

JM: Did you see your father at all?

 

When I was like eight years old, and I saw him once when I was thirteen or fourteen. And then I haven’t seen him since. Shit. But in the last three years my wife actually tracked him down for me on the Internet. We had a friend in the Registry; she says he moved to Las Vegas. She found thirteen Richard Millars in Las Vegas. She said, “One of them gotta be him.” About the seventh call, some guy answers the phone, and I know it’s my father’s voice. “Yeah,” I said. “Is Ricky there?” He says, “Yeah. Who’s this?” I says, “Ricky Millar.” He goes, “All right, wiseass, enough with this.” I said, “Oh, you never thought you’d get this fucking phone call?” He says, “Who’s this?” I said, “Well, let me take you back a few years, about twenty-five years. You left, you never came back, you left us in the fucking projects. Now you remember who I am?” And there was dead silence for about—it seemed like an eternity—but it was only like a minute. And he goes, “Listen, I left.” I said, “Yeah, you did.” He says, “I had to leave.” I said, “I understand you had to leave. You had to leave. You didn’t have to leave us, though. Four fucking kids in that environment.” He tried to say something negative about my mother, and I said, “My mother’s got her problems, but you know what, she coulda left too, but she fucking stayed. For all her craziness, she did stay.” So anyways, I let him know, I said, “Listen, I’m not trying to bother you for anything, I don’t need anything from you, I just wanted to see if you were alive or dead, obviously you’re alive. So here’s my phone number. If you ever feel like calling me, give me a call.” It was a pretty quick conversation, lasted about five minutes. And he called about two weeks later. My wife calls me at work, “You gotta get home, you gotta get home.” I says, “For what?” She says, “Your father called. He wants to talk to you.” So after the second conversation—I’ll be 100 percent honest with you, Jay, that’s the second conversation I had with that man—it felt like ten thousand pounds had been lifted from my shoulders. I mean, instantaneously, gone. Like a lot of aggression, a lot of, a lot of shit just left me that day. Anger, stuff that I had for one reason or another in me for all those years, just completely left my body. It was odd. It was like instantaneously. He didn’t say anything fucking profound, he didn’t say, “I’m going to send you a million dollars,” or nothing like that, and he didn’t say anything that I really particularly cared to hear. It was just the fact that I had talked to him in a civil tone, and I just felt like everything—honest to God, I just felt like a whole load of shit had flown off my shoulders, and it’s remained that way ever since.

 

JM: How widespread was domestic violence in the homes of the guys in the book?

 

Are you kidding me, man? It was epidemic. Ninety percent of those guys were dealing with that. It sucked, I can tell you. And it’s strange what it does to you, seeing that as a kid. You’d think that you’d be like, “Wow, I’m never gonna treat someone like that, I’m never gonna be violent with a girl, I’m never gonna dominate someone.” But that ain’t the way it works. No, instead you end up thinking, “I’m going to stay in control of my girl, I’m gonna be in charge, on top, do whatever it takes to dominate.” You say to yourself, “I ain’t gonna take any shit from my woman.” It’s fucked-up. Then in your own life you eventually realize, man, you can’t treat your girl that way, that these are human beings; these are human beings with needs and feelings just like you.

Growing up in a household where it’s chaos most of the time is tough. It’s bad when your dad beats your mom. But it’s really fucked-up when you don’t even the know the guy that’s just hit your mom in the next room. And this same motherfucker is telling you two days later that he wants to adopt you. “Yeah, right, buddy, you fuckin’ prick. Who the fuck are you, you fucked-up piece of shit?” So yeah, domestic violence took its toll and that was something a lot of us were dealing with. Either seeing it or getting the shit slapped out of us ourselves.

I’ve been blessed with my wife, my kids, a good family. Lemme tell you the hardest thing that ever happened in my life, Jay. We hadn’t been down here for long, and my wife, Denise, was seven months pregnant, and I took her out to dinner, and she went into the restroom and had what they call spotting. So I took her to the hospital and the doctor comes out and says, “I’ve got some really bad news for you; your baby’s dead.” I was like, “What the fuck? What do you mean my baby’s dead?” I was devastated. And of course she was just beside herself. And she had to go through labor, she had to push and everything, and the baby’s dead. Denise was a wreck and so I’m getting her in the car to take her home, and these fucking security guys come chasing after me, saying I can’t leave, there’s stuff we’ve got to attend to. Denise’s in no state to attend to anything, so I promised these guys I’d come back. So I get Denise home and into bed, then I went back to that fucking hospital. It’s the hardest thing I ever did. I held the baby, I named the baby, I buried the baby. I called her Angel, and that’s why I’ve got this tattoo. I’ve been through some shit in my life, but that was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

 

JM: Tell me a little about your approach to raising your children.

 

Tyler, I try to tell him to grab the opportunity, be motivated a little bit, you know? I’m very short with him sometimes because I feel like he takes his life for granted. I don’t know if it’s jealousy or what, but I find that he doesn’t try to do more with what he’s been blessed with. But I can tell you this: He’s fourteen going on fifteen, and he has not touched the fucking drugs. That’s not to say there hasn’t been challenges out there already. But I can honestly say that he’s pretty much a good kid. He’s good with his sisters and everything. He’s an average kid in school and that’s something that him and I have issues where I’d like to see him doing better, but he’s always willing to try, which is a good thing. That’s one thing I really admire about him. He’s not intimidated, he’s not afraid to try anything, which is a really good quality to have. I try to talk to him every day as a dad. There’s temptations out there, and don’t be afraid to talk to me about it. And then you also gotta know when to cool it, give them a little slack to make his mistakes. I just don’t want him to make the mistakes I made. Because then I would consider myself a failure as a father. There are two people in his life that deeply care about him, that love him to bits. But right now he’s entering that last phase of boyhood going into teenagerville, full-blown. He plays high school football, he’s done some boxing. He gets into his troubles in the school, he’s had his fights, like every boy does. And when he likes to test the waters to go over the edge, when I see him going to the dark side a little bit, I crack down on him a little.

And my little girls, they’re cute, absolutely gorgeous; they’re great. Nine and eight years old, they’re both straight-A students in school. I tell you something, I love them. The way I raise my son, I try to tell him to treat everybody with respect, everyone, especially women. Because what you give is what you’ll get. In the long run, that’s true. As far as my own daughters, let me put it to you this way. Nobody will be treating my daughters the way I treated others. Because if they do, that little project devil is going to come out. And that’s just how it’s going to be.

 

JM: Tell me about your work down here, how one thing led to another and you worked your way up.

 

I was doing the roofing down here. I had done it back home, so I kept doing it down here. I built swimming pools for a little while through my wife’s father. But I was working for this big roofing outfit for about three years. And one day I came home, and she said, “What are you doing home so early?” I said, “I quit.” She says, “What do you mean, you quit?” I said, “I can’t work for anybody anymore. I can’t do it.” I says, “I’m all done. I’ll either do it for myself or I don’t fucking work at all.” That was in 1995, eleven years ago. And ever since then, I’ve never worked for anybody.

 

JM: What prompted that?

 

It was right around Christmastime. I was in charge of a little crew, and I was always good at marketing, selling, making extra money for the company. I had gotten all this extra work to keep my guys going through the holidays, nobody gets laid off, everybody’s getting fifty or sixty hours of work, which is good. So we had a meeting in the office with a couple of the other guys that ran crews and my boss says, “Ricky, what we’re going to do is give them some of the jobs that you got, so that everybody will average forty hours.” I said, “What the fuck does that do for me and my guys?” I said, “Fuck that. I’m the guy that busted my balls to get the extra money for this company. You promised me a certain thing, and you’re saying no to that, and I’m telling you, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ I’m done. Have my fucking check ready in two days.” I left. They called me up, “We don’t want you to go; we’ll give you more money.” I said, “It ain’t about that. It’s about the fucking principle of it. What am I going to tell these guys now? They’re expecting sixty hours; Christmas is coming.”

 

JM: Was it tough setting out on your own?

 

No, actually, right after this I went down to see my wife’s family for a week, and I’m sitting on the beach reading the newspaper, and I saw an ad in the paper and got in touch with this guy who was looking for his own roofing guy to do some apartments that he owned. I answered an ad in the newspaper, and I made like forty thousand dollars in four months. I did all the work all by myself without a truck, without anything. Did it out of a sports car, swear to God. I would order all the materials from roofing supply companies, they would deliver ’em up to the roof, and I did it all, all by myself. Ever since then, I would sell the jobs, set the jobs up, complete the job, clean the job up, get more jobs.

Now I have guys working for me, but we’re goin’ through a drought here right now in this area. There’s not a lot of roofing work around. I gotta go farther south; that’s where all the work is. I try to give anybody a chance who wants a fucking job. They’re working with me, they gotta work hard, though. I’m extremely hands-on. I know all the shortcuts, what you’re trying to do, how you’re trying to smooth over something you’ve fucked up.

 

JM: How do you get on with the Mexican workers?

 

I don’t hire them.

 

JM: Why’s that?

 

Number one: I don’t like ’em. Number two: They’re taking away from people who pay taxes in this country. There’s no unions or nothing down here. This is a non-union, right-to-work state. So they got guys down here in Florida, they get up on a roof, nine dollars an hour now. You got a guy who’s trying to feed his family, if these other contractors are hiring Mexicans, all of them on seven dollars, eight dollars an hour, how you gonna feed your family?

I try to pay everybody good; I always have. I’ve been on the other side, right? Some of them appreciate it, some of them don’t. Pay well and you should be able to get better work out of them, but that is not necessarily true, though. [laughs] You always got guys that are bitching, they want more money for less work. Y’know, that’s the nature of the beast. One time I hired a crew, I useta have to wake them up at the fucking hotel rooms, right? One of them pulled out a knife on me. This was about four years ago. White guy, redneck. Pulled out this knife, and I says, “Well, here’s the thing, my friend: Now that you got it out, I hope you’re intent on fucking using it, because I’m going to beat your fucking ass.” He ran like a motherfucker. [laughs] Like I tell everybody, I only live here; I’m not from here. So you always have that little edge every once in a while that comes out of you, even if you’re not still there.

 

JM: Is that a good thing?

 

Sometimes. It just comes out, part of your built-in personality. Sometimes it just comes out. It’s just part of who I am.

 

JM: Tell me about the progression of jobs you had since you came down here.

 

Tell you what, I’ll be honest with you: When I got out of the marines, one guy gave me a job, an Irish guy. I didn’t know him; he didn’t have to give me a job or nothing. He gave me a job. Taught me all about this roofing shit. I worked with him for four or five years. I learned everything I know from him. Roofing is a tough job, but I owe everything I have to him. And I called him up, about three weeks ago, I got his phone number. He’s a real nice guy. I said, “I just wanted to let you know something.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “I’ve been trying to call you for years.” He got divorced or whatever, changed his numbers. I called him up to say thank you for taking the interest in me when I was younger, to show me some shit. I’ve been down to St. Thomas doing this roofing shit, Puerto Rico, all over the country. So he said, “Well, Ricky, you’ve always been a hard worker.” So it was nice to be able to say thank you to somebody who took some time for me.

 

JM: But when you first came down here . . .

 

Just applied for jobs. I was making nine dollars and fifty cents an hour when I first got down here. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll be honest with you: Anything that I’ve done, that I’ve accumulated—boats, houses, trucks—my wife has lots to do with that. She can see a goal and have the visualization towards how to achieve it. I don’t have that vision. I can get there financially because I can provide, but I can’t look at a piece of property or a house and say, “I can do this to it and it’s going to look beautiful.” She’s very good at that. Early on, she saw something, she says, in me that I didn’t really truly see in myself, that I could do things, accomplish certain things. I never knew I could. And she pushes me. In the new house, I’m the type of guy to have a counter, but for her it’s got to be a granite counter. Sometimes she pushes too hard and too high, but she’s good that way. She’s a great mom, very good with the kids.

Denise has a good eye for real estate. It’s not that tough to make a few bucks with property, buying and selling. Look for a plot of land with water nearby, at least a coupla acres. Get on the computer, get online, and do some research. See what someone paid for a property—maybe two thousand bucks twenty years ago, so you offer them forty thousand, and believe me, they are tempted. I bought one piece of land off a guy for forty thousand dollars, put a sign up, sold it for fifty-seven grand a few days later. We’ve done a couple of those deals.

 

JM: When you’re on your own roofing, what would a typical day be like?

 

Get up at six in the morning, up on the roof at seven. Soak through all your clothes by eight thirty with the sweat because of the humidity down here. Change into another set of clothes. I would bring three sets of clothes a day. It’s extremely physical. You’re ripping part of the roof off, you’re sweeping it up, patching it in, water testing, make sure it’s not leaking before you go on to the next section of the building. It’s a very physically demanding job. And when you’re doing it by yourself it can be very mentally challenging. You got to be disciplined enough to stay up on the roof to work. Mental discipline to stay up there when it’s hot. Sometimes I would work twelve hours a day. Work through lunch, all sorts of crazy shit. And then when you got paid it was like, “Wow. This working probably ain’t a bad deal.” [laughs] If you can keep it going. There’s serious competition: sixty-five roofing companies in this area alone. We’re all competing for the same stuff. I do good work and most of the jobs that come to me are word of mouth, probably 80 percent of my work. I prefer repair work. I’m doing a job right now, I’ll finish it tomorrow after you take off. I’ll finish it myself, and that’ll be two thousand dollars just in a few days’ work. Not net: two thousand profit. Materials only cost about 250 bucks. That’s why I like to do repair work better than full roofs; repairs have way higher profit margin. It takes its toll, though. Both of my knees are gone. My shoulders are bad. I can’t move from time to time, feels like I got bones rubbing on bones.

Going back to the projects, another fucked-up thing is the guilt. After you leave the projects and start your life over, you carry around a sense of guilt for any success that you’ve achieved. Like, here we are out fishing, relaxing in the sunshine in the Gulf of Mexico, and meantime your friends, your brother, all those guys from the projects, you know that they’re still messed-up. You are successful but you feel guilty. It’s a bit like what they call survivor’s guilt, I guess. You’re the one that got out. But you left people behind. They tell me I’m doing the right thing, all the guys back home, that they’re happy for me, but you still feel bad.

Clarendon Heights—there’s too many people who look at that neighborhood and think these people are fucking losers. You know what they are? They’re people that don’t believe they have futures when they are entitled to have one. Okay, they’re people who made bad choices; they had nobody teach them how to make the right choice whether you’re black, you’re white, you’re Puerto Rican, it doesn’t matter.

That’s one thing I feel bad about, the way we treated Chris and Boo-Boo in our little crowd, and how we fucked with Mokey and all them. They weren’t bad kids, and we might’ve been friends if the circumstances had been different. But the whole black/white thing was so big back then, and it felt like our neighborhood was just being taken over, which it has. The city was so polarized—still is, I guess. It’s just one more thing that we accepted growing up, them and us. It’s not something I’m proud of.

Back home, you’re aggressive. Always on the offensive. It’s stressful. Life feels like a constant battle. But the bonds that you form with people, those bonds were so strong. So, yeah, I do feel a sense of guilt. We were always there for each other. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve met great people down here in the nine or ten years that I’ve known ’em. Y’know, I run the police association’s football and cheerleading program. But there’s not the same bond as with kids I grew up with. I still feel like an outsider here looking in.

The day I went home was the worst fucking day of my life. It was so depressing, everybody still strung-out. You got generations, fathers, grandfathers, and their kids and their grandkids that are fucked-up. Fucked-up on heroin and fucked-up on everything else. The cycle is not ending, and that’s what’s saddening. It’s terrible. They gotta trust in themselves to make that break. Everybody says, “I want a house, I want a family,” but they don’t know how to get there. These are fucking people that got perfect credit scores, and they don’t know how to get a loan. They don’t know the importance of credit, they don’t know how to do this shit, stuff that a normal person that goes to college takes for fucking granted, you understand? It’s fucking—it’s so pathetically ridiculous, it gets you angry

 

JM: Because . . .

 

Just the waste, man. You’re looking at people you know yourself; these are not stupid people. Yet it’s like they wasted their entire lives, myself included when I was young. Nobody grows up in there and says, “Hey, I want to be a junkie,” or “I want to be a fuckin’ jailbird,” or “I want to be a murderer,” or “I want to be a rapist,” or “I want to be a dick-sucker.” We all grow up saying, “I hope I don’t end up like that guy, that guy in the hallway, that guy in the projects, that guy who’s fucked-up every day.” But as you grow older, well: “That guy’s pretty cool, he just got out of jail, that guy’s a gangster, watch out for him, you gotta respect him.” Your role models are different. That’s what’s actually terrible. It’s fucking pathetic, man. Now some of those guys at home are so fucked-up on drugs they ain’t never coming out of it, never. Some of these people you talked to, this will be the last time in their lives you will talk to them, because within two, three years, I’m sure some of them will be dead. And we’re not talking about elderly people, we are talking about people that are forty fucking years old.

It’s fucked-up because you know that they can do it, if they put their mind to it, they marshal their resources, try to make a decent living. It’s just really sad. When I went home that time—and I’m not a very emotional guy—but when I saw my friends so fucked-up, it was terrible. Guys hanging on the same fucking corner, guys without a home, guys without teeth.

 

JM: To what extent are they, the individuals, responsible for what happens to them and to what extent is it the society and the opportunities available to them?

 

You can blame society only so much. You gotta fucking take responsibility for yourself. Okay, in the projects, no question, you’re dealt a shit hand. But you still gotta make it work somehow. I mean, do you blame your mother for picking the wrong guy to marry? Do you blame your father for marrying a woman who has no concept on how to raise kids? Do you blame your grandparents for moving here? I mean, you gonna blame the kids you were growing up with, the older guys you were lookin’ up to that were fucking people up, doin’ crazy shit? I mean, blame can be endless. C’mon, you’re fuckin’ forty years old, it’s time to take some responsibility yourself.

In the end everybody is responsible for themselves. But in this particular area we’re talking about, you’ve got two of the most major, highly influential universities in the entire world, right? None of those universities have ever delved into that surrounding community and really tried to help, give the people hope, give them education, take an interest in them. They’ll take interest in the people that got money. But those motherfuckers don’t need the help. It’s those people that are poor that need the help.

 

JM: When you meet people who have never worked a tough job and don’t have as much drive and guts and smarts as some of those people back in Clarendon Heights, and these corporate executives are making five hundred thousand dollars a year, does that ever get to you?

 

No, not now. Because I make more money than corporate executives, legally. I make a good amount of money. This boat isn’t free. The house I’m having built ain’t fucking free. Nobody gave me anything. This is not on loan from anybody, you understand? When they see me in my work clothes and I look like this, don’t judge me from what I look like, motherfucker, because I got just as much if not more than you now. See, we’re equal. It may not look it, but we are.

 

JM: Are you equal in their eyes?

Maybe, maybe not. I don’t give a fuck how they feel. I know where I’m at, I know where I came from, and I know where I’m going. And I could lose it all tomorrow, all of it, be dirt fucking poor, and go back to the projects. I’m gonna live still, I’m gonna be all right. That five hundred thousand-dollar executive, that motherfucker loses it all tomorrow, he’s gonna throw himself out a fucking window or shoot himself in the head. That’s the difference, point blank.

Whether guys at home have been a success or a failure, I look at guys I grew up with, I look at them with level eyes. I know I ain’t no better than them, and I don’t look down on them.